


the half-burned skeleton

by ernestdummkompf (JehanFerres)



Category: Il trovatore - Verdi/Cammarano, Opera & Related Fandoms
Genre: 'it's set in 1409!' DI LUNA WAS NINE YEARS OLD THEN, (after piave), (as you know), (but more of that in the notes), (necessarily because the libretto makes no fucking sense from an historical standpoint), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, F/M, Historical Inaccuracy, Historical References, M/M, Mutual Pining, Trans Male Character, also... references provided because i am, and just leave me looking through wikipedia pages scratching my head, both the luna brothers are trans, but jesus christ does he ever just do whatever the fuck he likes with history, cammarano is... my second favourite verdi librettist, i cannot and will not be stopped, that bitch
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:34:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 65,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23441011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JehanFerres/pseuds/ernestdummkompf
Summary: leonora doesn't break her word and agrees to marry di luna. manrico and azucena are allowed to go free. there are still consequences.
Relationships: Ferrando/Conte di Luna (Il trovatore), Leonora/Conte di Luna (Il trovatore), Leonora/Manrico (Il trovatore)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5
Collections: Camp NaNo - April 2020





	1. PROLOGUE

**Author's Note:**

> a little background is in order here. i have thoughts about opera sometimes, and my good friend who can be found on tumblr at simone-boccanegra, despite the fact that she shouldn't, regularly indulges these, and then this happens, because it's camp nanowrimo and also i'm bored because i'm In Doors. and thus: I Am Making The Opera Characters Trans. (talk to me about the baritones that i think are trans. it's most of the ones i like.)
> 
> the title is, of course, the last line of _[di due figli vivea padre beato](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1talnYAs0A)_ , ferrando's aria that opens the opera. as far as how characters looks... i mean, i'm gonna describe them where possible but ferrando is very much stefan kocan in both appearance and mannerisms, while di luna is kinda... definitely dmitri hvorostovsky (including the white hair), but also looks a bit younger than 27, because being trans is That Way.
> 
> everybody's ages, in ascending order:
> 
>   * manrico: 18
>   * leonora: 22
>   * ines: 25
>   * di luna: 27
>   * ruiz: 30
>   * azucena: 32
>   * ferrando: 37
> 


Ferrando, for the past God only knew how many years, Ferrando had been more or less constantly a part of Di Luna’s life. He had quickly gone from a common foot-soldier in the army serving under the Count Martin Di Luna completely by chance because of where his parents lives to suddenly having the Count’s attention. Count Martin had been young, not because his father had died young but because his father, Martin the Elder, was the King of Sicily and the county over which the younger Martin had jurisdiction was minor enough that Martin the Elder felt he could leave its administration to his son.

Ferrando had not returned home to the anonymous village in which he had grown up after the war, even though he had left with every intention of doing so, because his family, tenant farmers, needed all the extra help they could get from their eldest son. Instead, he had gone with Martin Di Luna to the city of Zaragoza when he was around twenty, after what had eventually played out as a very brief battle, to accompany him back to the palace in which he, his wife, and his then only child lived.

Ferrando had immediately become a favourite of Martin, who was only barely twenty five despite his talent as a military commander. At first he had felt guilty for taking him from his wife, because from the second she had met him, Violante Luisa had been nothing but kind and gentle to Ferrando, treating him more as though he was a long-lost brother or an old friend than a menial as he truly was (or had been - both Martin and Violante Luisa had encouraged him to consider himself not to be inferior to them but to be their equal, if he was to be her husband’s favourite). He had quickly realised, however, that the actual reason that his master’s wife was so happy to meet him was that she had a female lover.

At the time, it had struck him as strange that they were married to each other and had a child, but neither of them was attracted to the other, but his parents had married for love. He understood better after a few months living with Martin and Violante Luisa that, for the nobility, marriage was out of necessity and not for love. His father had briefly mentioned noblemen and even noblewomen having lovers when he had been younger and preparing to leave home to be a soldier, but he had always considering it to be a distant concept, not something that he would suddenly be in the middle of.

Over time he had come to love both Martin Di Luna and his wife, and that had just made it all the more painful when Violante Luisa had died giving birth to her second child not even a year after he had met her. There was a nearly ten year age gap between the two siblings, but it should have been closer to ten than it was, because V—, the second child, had been barely viable at birth. Violante Luisa had brought her second child into the world, but she had died doing it, leaving Martin Di Luna and Ferrando alone: Violante Luisa’s lover moved away from the palace when the countess died, unable to bear the idea of her lover no longer being there but still having to be present in the place where she had died.

Ferrando had thought, at the time, that things couldn’t possibly get any worse. Then, two years later, that woman had stolen V— from the cradle, when Ferrando had been supposed to be watching over the child, and—

Ferrando still struggled to think about what he had found that evening.

It wasn’t that he had blocked it from his mind, because he very much hadn’t. Even now, nearly two decades later, if he looked at a fire in the wrong way, or went to the wrong part of the forest surrounding the palace, he would find himself violently reliving the event, and with it the days of wandering aimlessly around the palace and grounds, and the nightmares and the nights he had spent crying only to have to pretend that he was fine and that nothing was wrong, because now he was responsible for M—, because Martin had died of grief after V— had been stolen.

He had had the woman within his grasp, but Di Luna had plied him into leaving her “just for now” so that he could exact revenge too, against the man who he thought stole a woman who clearly wanted nothing to do with him. Leonora never had wanted him, and Ferrando could tell that she never would now that all this had happened, not before and especially not now that she had essentially been forced into a marriage that she clearly had no interest in.

But Di Luna had somehow forced the issue with her to the extent that she had agreed to marry him… if he released her lover and his mother. Apparently Di Luna’s revenge for his petty sexual frustration, which he could very well solve by himself without having to force the woman into a marriage that she clearly resented, was far more important to him than Ferrando’s still present trauma from finding the corpse of a baby fifteen years ago.

And it wasn’t as though Di Luna didn’t know how Ferrando felt. Di Luna was - or rather he had been - more or less the only person that Ferrando felt comfortable talking about his feelings, especially about what had happened to V—, and more specifically the sense of personal responsibility and culpability that he felt for what had transpired. They had talked about it at great length because Di Luna also had issues that he didn’t feel comfortable talking to somebody he hadn’t grown up around about. Even if there were some precise details - like what Di Luna’s father had been doing with him - that Ferrando kept from his new master, Di Luna was still the person who had the most knowledge of what the last twenty or so years had put Ferrando through.

It was difficult, then, not to count this as a personal betrayal.

Ferrando was, usually, not the sort to over-react. There were times when the past would overtake him, but generally he at least tried to be a calming presence, because two people as highly-strung as Di Luna running around would just spell trouble for everybody. That day at the army encampment outside of Castellar, Ferrando could only rationalise as being Di Luna somehow managing to redirect Ferrando’s anger into something that, even if it wasn’t necessarily constructive to drag his master into a tent and make him forget at least what day it was, if not his own name, was at least more enjoyable than festering in the knowledge that the woman who had caused all his misery was right there and he couldn’t do anything about it.

This time, of course, things were wildly different.

Honestly, Ferrando wanted nothing to do with Di Luna and his selfishness, not right now. He was furious that he had just allowed Azucena to leave with her son, rather than allowing Ferrando to kill her, but of course his mind had been clouded by the fact that he wanted Leonora. Ferrando couldn’t excuse this, but he also couldn’t force himself to get over Di Luna, even though whatever they had done had clearly just been a but of fun for Di Luna, without him realising just how strongly Ferrando felt for him.

* * *

It was strange, considering that she had lived here, in the Castle of the King and Queen of Aragon at Zaragoza, for her entire life that Leonora suddenly felt completely unwelcome and estranged from everybody that she had known since she had been only a little girl. The Aljáferia Palace was beautiful, yes, but Leonora also feared that at any moment she would suddenly find herself in the dungeon to replace Manrico and his mother.

This wouldn’t happen because of her new husband, she didn’t think. In fact, Di Luna already seemed to have tired of her, or at least he had hardly spoken to her since Manrico and his mother had been set free. The problem was more with Ferrando, his lieutenant. Leonora didn’t know what the problem Ferrando had with her was, but she also wasn’t sure that she wanted to know. What she did know, however, was that, for the past couple of days, he had occasionally given her very unpleasant (and very obviously drunken) looks over dinner, until Di Luna had apparently decided that even he was fed up of his attitude and had a hushed but vicious conversation with him that had resulted in Ferrando silently leaving. Leonora hadn’t seen him since, and she was fairly sure that Di Luna hadn’t either.

Of course, she hadn’t asked, because it wasn’t a subject that she knew how to bring up.

Up until then, Leonora had found something almost endearing about Di Luna, but now he just seemed miserable. Previously he had been nearly constantly annoying and at times almost frantic, but on some level he was clearly well-meaning, even if he was awful at showing it. Unfortunately for Leonora and everybody else around him, Di Luna turned his sadness out upon everybody else, rather than trying to communicate about his feelings. She couldn’t like him now, not when he was behaving like that.

Even so, or maybe even because of this, Di Luna left her mostly to herself and didn’t force anything upon her. Not that he would have tried after the first time, or at least Leonora didn’t think he would have. Leonora hadn’t said as much, but she was fairly sure that he wasn’t so much attracted to Leonora as he was in love with the idea of her. The long and short of this had been that it hadn’t been at all enjoyable for either party, and she had no desire to repeat it. She was fairly sure that Di Luna reciprocated, but she didn’t want to ask.

Not because she thought there was a chance that Di Luna would surprise her - he was unpredictable and strange, yes, but surely even he wouldn’t be as erratic as to want to do something that he had clearly hated doing again on the vague chance that he might enjoy it more the second time - but more because she didn’t want to make him uncomfortable. Perhaps in the eyes of another person he didn’t entirely deserve that level of dignity, given that he had tried to have her lover killed and then tried to kidnap her from a nunnery when she had thought he had succeeded, but even without any other mitigating factors, Leonora had grown up with him, and for some reason she still at least tolerated him, even if she didn’t actively like him.

The fact that she had known Di Luna as a child played into the primary reason for her lack of desire to push him on too many points. She didn’t remember too much of him as a child, and even less of the missing infant who had been killed - but what she did remember of Di Luna was the change of name from M— to Fadrique when he was around fifteen, and the subsequent change of clothing, and styles of address. She had been a little surprised that the adults around Di Luna had allowed it, but, she supposed, he had had Ferrando to fight at least some of his battles for him, and if the death of the previous count had left Ferrando a little feral, then this new vulnerability in his charge had caused him to cross over, at least briefly, to positively rabid in how protective of the young count he was. He seemed to have calmed down since, yes, but few people would dare to challenge Di Luna, or at least they wouldn’t on this particular facet of himself.

Of course, there were only so many things that Di Luna felt fully confident talking about to a man ten years older than him who, for all his attempts to understand and in spite of how genuinely caring and well-meaning he was, just couldn’t fully grasp the situation. When trying to bind his chest using bandages had caused Di Luna bruises and cracked ribs, he had asked Leonora for help instead of Ferrando, because while hypothetically Di Luna could sew, the idea of acknowledging his body for that long made him feel a little dizzy. Leonora had made Di Luna something to bind his chest with without breaking any of his ribs, which he had been very glad of - not least because he could just copy the pattern from then without having to see himself in the mirror without a shirt on.

The fact that she understood this had made her an obvious partner for Manrico, who was the same as Di Luna. Of course, she hadn’t mentioned this to Di Luna at the time - Manrico had known about Di Luna because there was no way in which he couldn’t have - and had just let him assume that the reason she wasn’t surprised was that she had known him as a child. For his part, Di Luna hadn’t questioned the fact that she had known not to touch the horizontal scar along the lower portion of his stomach.

Leonora had no further desire to see Di Luna in any state of undress, but at the same time, she could no longer resent him. There was something desperately sad about the idea of him fixating with such intensity upon a woman who had to be blackmailed into marriage with him only to appear as thought he was dissociating throughout their first night together. This was doubled by the fact that he must have known that she was just thinking of Manrico throughout, but of course she would never say that to him.

The more she thought about it, thought about all of it, everything from how protective of Di Luna he had always been to the way Di Luna had only been affectionate towards her when he wasn’t there and wouldn’t know about it, the more Leonora was able to connect the way Ferrando had been looking at her to the way Di Luna had looked at Manrico that night in the garden when she had thought that they had killed each other. That sort of love just seemed miserable to her, too - being jealous of a completely loveless marriage where one party was constantly imagining another man to whom she had made vows and already had some far more enjoyable sexual experiences and the other almost seemed afraid of his spouse, and even without that where nobody seemed to be having any of their needs met, either sexually or emotionally.

Certainly, Leonora and Di Luna were not the often-romanticised childhood sweethearts that she found in the romance novels that Di Luna had been given as a child by well-meaning relatives and fobbed off onto Leonora, not by any stretch of the imagination. It seemed to Leonora more like it was Di Luna and Ferrando who more filled those roles, even though Di Luna was no fainting damsel (or at least the damsel part of the description was inaccurate), and even at the best of times Ferrando could only dubiously be deemed to be a knight in shining armour.


	2. CHAPTER ONE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you now have to read More Of This. it's uhh. a bit more set-up, because fuck you nobody gets to kiss YET. but they will soon!

The one person in all of this that Leonora didn’t feel that she needed to tread carefully around was Ines. There was no way Ines would let her get away with sitting around being sad like she currently felt, and she had said that, if she needed her to, she would gladly make sure Di Luna wouldn’t try anything with her if she wasn’t interested in it. It wasn’t that Ines disliked Di Luna - Leonora didn’t think she even had any opinion on him - but Ines was so forthright about her feelings and opinions that she would probably just directly tell him to go away if he didn’t when he saw the two of them together rather than trying to start an argument.

Of course, that was a moot point still, not that this upset Leonora. They had been married for just over a month, and they had only been - she couldn’t really describe it as intimate, because she wasn’t sure that Di Luna had looked her in the eyes during the experience or since it - once. Even then it had seemed more like Di Luna was trying to get it over with, rather than it being the longed-for payoff of his years of pining over her.

The problem was that, now that Manrico was gone presumably for good and Leonora had married Di Luna, they didn’t really have much to talk about. The Queen rarely asked for Leonora these days because of her new marital status, assuming wrongly that she would be wanting to spend every waking moment with her husband, rather than trying to avoid him most of her life. She was still a tutor to the queen’s two daughters, of course, but even the two young girls seemed to be trying to avoid her.

Di Luna, meanwhile, had been both needier than ever and less willing than Leonora had ever seen him to talk to her. She supposed that he had realised that she knew he was in love with Ferrando - because really, who couldn’t? She supposed that it must have been awkward to know that his wife had realised that he was in love with not just another man but (from what she had been told) a common soldier who had been promoted not out of any particular military talent but to keep him out of a position where he could cause any further harm.

She was still glad of Ines’ company, since she was neither her stupid husband nor his unfortunate but equally frustrating army officer. She seemed to be the only person who was still herself, and who still supported Leonora whatever it was she was trying to do. Even when Leonora had tried to become a nun, while she had been upset, Ines had been supportive of her friend throughout: she had been the only one of their friends who had accompanied Leonora to the nunnery, and had they not been separated in the furore that followed Leonora was sure that Ines would have followed her over and joined Manrico’s men, rather than remaining with the ladies of the court at the palace.

“You would probably have been able to talk some sense into Manrico,” Leonora said. “All…” She gestured around the library that they were sat talking and drinking in. “All this is because he ran off to try to save his mother, and that was just what the Count wanted him to do.” The library was full of books that had belonged to Di Luna’s grandfather, and then his father, and Di Luna had been particular that if any of the books got accidentally damaged, especially those that had come from his grandfather, there would be trouble. Fortunately, Leonora didn’t read much - but she liked the atmosphere of the library, as did Ines, and Di Luna knew to leave her alone while she was in there.

“I still want to talk some sense into Manrico,” Ines huffed. “Insulting you and swearing never to speak to you again. You’d never see either of them sacrificing their own happiness for anybody else’s sake, not like you have.” She poured herself another generous cup of wine, her third in the last couple of hours, and then poured some more for Leonora, even though her own cup was nearly full. Leonora didn’t want to argue with her friend at a time like this, even though she was fairly sure that there was some personal sacrifice on Di Luna’s part somewhere. “You didn’t need to marry in the first place.”

“I needed to marry.” Leonora corrected Ines’ error almost without thinking. They had had this debate so many times that she almost didn’t need to think about the words she was saying. “I didn’t need to marry for love, but I needed to marry so I could produce children for some… rich noble family.”

“Some rich noble family where they all have to share one face between them,” Ines joked. She didn’t say anything about Di Luna’s personal circumstances, even though she, like everybody else in Aragon, was completely aware. “You could have pledged yourself to eternal maidenhood,” she pointed out.

“I tried to,” Leonora pointed out. “But you saw what happened when Di Luna didn’t get what he wanted.” She paused and took a drink. “What he thought he wanted.”

Ines gave her a curious look in response to that last remark, but didn’t say anything about it, instead laughing and clarifying, “No, not then. When you were far younger, before all this rubbish with the count and Manrico started. You should have been one of those girls who lives her entire life in a nunnery and then gets made a saint once she dies.”  
“Just an ordinary life, then?” Leonora joked.

“Exactly.” Ines finished the rest of her wine, while Leonora continued to sip at hers. “Rather than end up stuck with that idiot for the rest of your life. Or the other idiot.”

“Which one’s which?” Leonora and Ines both laughed at the quip, but they both knew that Leonora was completely right. There was no intelligence to be found in either of the two men.

Leonora certainly did not love Manrico for his intelligence. She didn’t know why she loved Manrico, but she knew for a fact that it certainly wasn’t because he was intelligent. Manrico could probably be dropped in the middle of the woods without either a compass or any tools and be trusted to have found his way back to civilisation after crafting a small town while he was there without getting worried for his safety - but he was easily tricked and easily lead. Also, not that Leonora could blame him for this, he could barely read or write. None of his music was written down; he had a remarkable ability to memorise music and simply didn’t feel the need to write it down, even if he was able to.

Of course, Di Luna wasn’t particularly intelligent either, but he was a more dangerous sort of unintelligent where he thought he was intelligent. Leonora had lost track of how many languages he spoke or at least could understand, but his lack of understanding of the thoughts and feelings of other people was a blind spot so great that Leonora could scarcely believe that he had any friends. He already seemed to have driven away Ferrando, who Leonora had assumed would be beside him and defending him for the rest of his life if he could, by misinterpreting what seemed to her at least to be obvious signs that Ferrando was in love with Di Luna. She could imagine that he would continue to drive people away until there was nobody left, but he wouldn’t notice that he was doing it.

“I used to be close to Fadrique, you know?” Leonora said, before she realised that she was even thinking it. “I’m younger than him, and it was even more back then, but we were friends.”

“I remember,” Ines said. “He never paid much attention to me, even when you had started to be friends with me.”

There it was again. Di Luna misinterpreting what had probably been very clear signals in Ines’ mind and driving her away. Ines didn’t exactly want to be everybody’s friend - she certainly hadn’t been convinced by Manrico at first, and she still wasn’t convinced by him now - but generally she was a very open person. Di Luna would have had to make a real effort to make her actively dislike him, outside of what he had done recently.

“What happened, then?” Ines asked.

“Di Luna is stupid,” Leonora replied. “Just like you said. And he thinks far too much of himself.”

“I can think of at least one person who’s just adding fuel to that particular fire,” Ines said, shifting around in her chair until she was finally perched cross-legged on it.

“You don’t mean me, do you?” Leonora asked, almost annoyed with her.

“Of course not,” Ines said. “You tell him when he’s being stupid. You can’t help it if he won’t listen to what he’s being told, even when all the evidence points to him being an idiot.” She laughed. “I mean that army officer who trails around after him interminably. You know the one I mean. He’s probably—”

“Do you mean Ferrando?” Leonora quickly cut Ines off before she could get to the end of that thought. “Because if you do I have a lot of thoughts about what he’s feeling.”

“Probably,” Ines said. “I don’t know any of their names, any of the soldiers. They all might as well be the same person, for all I care about them.” She laughed. “Or any men, frankly.”

“What does he look like?” Leonora asked. The fact that Ines was a servant rather than a noble like Leonora meant that she would probably have heard most of the gossip from the palace’s other servants - she might know how Ferrando really felt about Di Luna. “Tall?”

“Tall, dark hair…” That was all of the soldiers, so probably not the best starting point. “He looks like he thinks he’s the most important person ever born.”

A tall, dark-haired soldier who looked like he had an overinflated ego and trailed around after Di Luna looking for attention. There was only one person Ines could have been describing. “That’s him.” Ines looked vaguely pleased, but not particularly like she cared. “He was promoted to keep him out of trouble,” Leonora said, before she had managed to vet the thought for how appropriate it was.

Still, Ines seemed to find it amusing. “He needs to tell Di Luna just how stupid he is.” Ines laughed again. “Or just stop pining after him like a lost puppy and…” Ines cut herself off again. “I haven’t seen him in the palace since just after you married the Count,” she said suddenly. “Did he find something better to do with his time?”

“For all I know,” Leonora said, in a purposefully non-committal tone even though she didn’t really like thinking about how Ferrando had reacted to her being forced to marry Di Luna. “I haven’t seen much of him either.” She looked down and drunk the rest of her wine before she replied, glad that Ines wouldn’t push her for any more details. “But I think that might have been through design.”

“Why’s that?” Even if she wasn’t going to push for detail Leonora didn’t want to give, Ines was always going to be curious about her friend’s life. “You didn’t walk in on them, did you? Because, you know, most noblemen—” Ines clearly knew something, but Leonora didn’t think she wanted the details right now.

“No, no,” Leonora said quickly. “That would make things easier, really,” she admitted. “No, he…” She paused to try to collect her thoughts. “I think Ferrando was in love with Di Luna from the start. You wouldn’t just… stay with that mess for your entire life if you didn’t feel something towards them.”

“Or maybe he feels guilty for what happened to V—?” Ines suggested, because as long as they were speculating about the two most incomprehensible men on the planet, she thought she might as well throw this particular hat into the ring. It probably had about as much weight in the conversation as any other, for all she could understand about Ferrando and Di Luna. “And now he feels like he has to protect Fadrique from…” Ines thought for a second about what, exactly, Ferrando might feel the need to protect Di Luna from, but it was a struggle to conceive of something, even with Di Luna the way he was. “What, a rabid witch picking him up and chucking him on a bonfire?”

Leonora laughed, but then immediately felt bad for it. He had tried to hide it, but Leonora had still seen how Ferrando sometimes looked thoroughly haunted by something that he probably didn’t even know how to talk about. Of course, if she had seen it, then Ines probably had too, but her comment wasn’t ill-intentioned. And then there was the way she had sometimes, before all of this, seen Ferrando looking at Di Luna. It wasn’t the way somebody looked at a person they felt duty-bound to protect to atone for some historical error, but somewhere between unbridled lust and a maiden unsure of what to do with the favour she had just received from a handsome knight.

Whatever the way Ferrando looked at his master was, it averaged out to “disgustingly in love”, and still Di Luna apparently somehow hadn’t noticed it.

“Well, one of the things a wife is meant to do is give her husband advice,” Ines pointed out. “Maybe if it was coming from you he would realise who he actually wants to be with.”

Not that Ines could see any particular similarity between Leonora and Ferrando, aside from the fact that they both lived in roughly the same place - although even if she was to take that into consideration, Leonora lived in the palace, while Ferrando was mostly confined to the barracks. Quite aside from the difference in age and gender, which was significant enough that Ines was tempted just to discount it altogether as a complete fluke, while Ferrando wasn’t exactly rough, or at least not in the same way as Ruiz or Manrico, he was at least gruffer and less domesticated than Leonora. Certainly more of a hunting hound than a lady’s lap-dog like Leonora was.

Also, of course, Leonora knew that there were things she didn’t know. Ines always got the impression from Ferrando that he believed that he knew everything, despite how much evidence there was to the contrary. Leonora could be a little cocky, but at least she both would and emotionally could admit to being an idiot. Ferrando, on the other hand, seemed to hate even the idea that he was capable of being wrong. On the one hand, Ines supposed that it wasn’t his fault, considering what had happened to him in the past. On the other hand, it made him completely insufferable to be around.

“Would that be a good idea?” Leonora asked. “He already knows I don’t love him; he’d probably just think I was trying to push him into somebody else’s arms.”

“And if he happens to also want the person who you’re trying to fob him off onto, then I can’t see why that would be a bad thing for him.” Ines shrugged.

Leonora decided against continuing to over-think how, even though she hadn’t heard the conversation between them, she had been able to tell that Ferrando had been absolutely furious with Di Luna the last time she had seen him, instead opting to continue with the topic of not wanting to anger Di Luna. Considering that she had thought, at one point, that her original plan was stupid, it was almost unbelievable to Leonora how much just agreeing to go along with Di Luna in an attempt to placate him had complicated matters in an extremely unexpected way.

“How did you know, anyway?” Leonora asked, finally, once her mind had exhausted all the other possible topics of conversation. “I’m sure it isn’t something he’s making public, and you aren’t close enough to either of them to hear their gossip.”

“You’d think that,” Ines said, in a tone that didn’t let Leonora in on which part of the comment it was she was responding to. “God only knows what those soldiers get up to in the barracks and on the field.” Leonora had to laugh at that. “All those men, together for long periods of time, with no female society when they’re on the battlefield?” She paused for effect and to pour herself and then Leonora some more wine. “And they all dress and undress together.” Leonora wasn’t sure she would want to be touched after a day of fighting on a battlefield, but, then again, she wasn’t a soldier. “They’re bound to get at least curious.”

“And if any of them are that way inclined…”

“And all the nobles are. They must be.”

“What do you mean?” Here, Leonora was truly lost. Surely, the whole purpose of being noble was to have children, so that they could continue to be that particular persuasion of noble. Having relations that couldn’t lead to reproduction seemed somewhat counter to the whole point of that.

“They can all marry, but you don’t need to like somebody to have children with them. You could have children with him.”

“Well, no, I couldn’t,” Leonora pointed out.

“You know what I mean,” Ines said. “If you could have children with him, then you could have children with him.”

Alright, Leonora thought, but didn’t say. “You don’t need to like the other party, but surely you both need to finish, and that’s rather difficult with somebody you hate.” She opted for that instead, hoping that being that forthright about a subject that she rarely discussed with anybody would stop Ines in her tracks.

“Pretend they’re somebody you do like, then.” Ines somehow managed not to miss a beat. “Nobody will know.”

“I imagine your husband would,” Leonora said, somewhat more primly than she had intended.

“But does that really matter?” Ines asked. “They don’t shove a nobleman and a noblewoman who have never met together and just expect them to fall in love! That would be ridiculous.” Now that she thought about it, none of the stories Leonora had read as a child concerned a woman falling in love with the man that she was in an arranged marriage with. It always seemed to be some strange knight sweeping her off her feet after meeting her in the middle of the woods, or a mysterious gentleman winning her heart by killing a bull that tried to gore her. “They expect you to get on with it and produce children, and if you like each other then that’s just a plus for you but not what they’re hoping for. All noblemen and noblewomen have lovers. Your mistress the queen probably has a lover, you just don’t know who it is.”

Leonora supposed that that was true, but she still wanted to marry for love rather than out of obligation. But the point also raised the question of just what it was that Di Luna was expecting, since he had been just as determined as her to marry for love, if not more. “And I suppose the count must have secretly read the same books as me as a child.” She paused to think. “In fact, I know he did. He was always the one giving them to me.”

Ines laughed. “I remember you told me, when he started lurking outside your window. You said he always told you that he hadn’t read them—”

“—but he’d drawn little stick figures in all the margins and written notes to himself! I remember too,” Leonora laughed. “Even then he just wanted to trail around after the soldiers, rather than doing whatever it was the ladies wanted us to do.” It had always been Di Luna’s aunts or his grandmother fussing over him, even though he had had a tutor after V— had been born, but he hadn’t wanted a bit of it. It hadn’t really been an early indicator of what was to come, because Leonora had been the same, he had just found the patrols and exercises that the soldiers went out on interesting, and he would rather have been doing that than sitting around at home.

“Do you think he and Ferrando ever slept together?” Ines asked, with no run-up to the question.

Since they were already on that topic of conversation, Leonora replied, “If they did, he can’t have been much good. Three minutes and then roll over and cry for the rest of the night.” She wasn’t entirely sure whether it was Ferrando or Di Luna she was referring to here, because Ferrando was so inscrutable that she couldn’t even work out if he had ever had a partner, and Di Luna…

Well.

She had put it down to awkwardness about his body at first, but really it shouldn’t have been possible to be that clueless, even with those sorts of extenuating circumstances. It was probably better that she tried to forget it, just so that she didn’t get vicariously embarrassed by the experience. Unfortunately for Ines and her curiosity about the exploits of the two men, though, that also involved also not opening that particular can of worms, and, if at all possible, not considering Ferrando and Di Luna in the same thought.

* * *

If Di Luna was in love with Ferrando, he went about it in a very strange way, Leonora found herself thinking later that evening.

He usually wandered around rather than acknowledging his wife when they spent time together, but this was entirely out of the ordinary. He had been mostly pacing around the battlements as the sun set, occasionally coming back in to carry on a conversation. He was not particularly good conversation at the best of times, which this was apparently not, so he was not so much talking to Leonora as saying disjointed phrases in her general direction as she sat in Di Luna’s antechamber, and apparently expecting this to have the same effect as speaking in coherent sentences.

This may well have worked perfectly with Ferrando; they always seemed to be on broadly the same plane of communication when Leonora had seen them together or accidentally overheard a conversation between the two men. It did not, however, work as a method of communication with Leonora, and, more to the point, she was beginning to lose patience with it, and with him.

At some point during the evening’s activities - Leonora didn’t know either when or where, nor did she care to find out the answer - he had discarded his top layer of robes and was wandering around in a shirt and hose with his doublet unfastened, the neck of the shirt open in such a way that a small part of his chest binder over his collarbone was visible. Leonora, finally tiring of watching him apparently trying to tire himself out or find some part of the palace he hadn’t yet wandered through, reached out when he was near enough and grabbed his wrist to get his attention or, preferably, to stop him.

For a moment he looked a little startled, but his expression changed to offense and mild disappointment when he realised who she was. Of course, Leonora didn’t know exactly who Di Luna was hoping would be grabbing him so near to his bedchamber, but she could hazard a guess. And of course, she didn’t mind, after her conversation with Ines she wasn’t sure that she even saw the problem with nobles taking lovers, and she often saw women who she thought were beautiful, so it wasn’t even the matter of gender that frustrated her.

It was more the fact that Di Luna had apparently taken it upon himself to go through all of this by himself as though he thought he was some sort of martyr, without thinking that perhaps Leonora might also want to know what was wrong or even what he was thinking about. Leonora wasn’t sure that she would be able to give practical advice, but she was a little frustrated that, even though she wasn’t a romantically loving wife, he didn’t consider her important or even interested enough to tell her what was going on in his head. Well, that and his apparently inability to carry on a conversation this evening.

“You need to stop.” She didn’t suggest it but practically ordered him. He put his hand up to dislodge her, but she refused to relent. “I don’t care how you think having a conversation with another person works,” she said, sounding more and more like a stern tutor with every word in a way that she just knew would already be annoying Di Luna, “but I don’t know what you’re thinking if you don’t say it, and that doesn’t make you a good conversational partner.” Or life partner, she thought, but didn’t say, because that felt like it would be a little too far below the belt, especially when he clearly already felt cornered.

He probably wasn’t actually capable of being a real threat, but, at the same time, Leonora didn’t want to antagonise him in this state. For one thing it just seemed like it would be rude, but also he would probably somehow manage to blame it on Ferrando, and that wasn’t what she wanted. She wanted to get rid of Di Luna by shoving him into Ferrando’s arms, rather than accidentally making him hate Ferrando. If he was already angry with Ferrando - which she thought he was - she needed to treat him as carefully as she could physically bring herself to.

“What makes you think it’s your right to know what I’m thinking?” Di Luna snapped, and Leonora had to fight off the urge to make an insulting comment about his ability to have any thoughts. Di Luna finally wrenched his arm away from her, and Leonora couldn’t help but think that, for a man who had spent months professing how much he loved her, he seemed far too cold and irritable with her for that to possibly be the truth. This was another thing that she wouldn’t say, however. “You’ve not shown any interest in knowing about me since we married. Why should I start pandering to your delicacy now?”

The remark about Leonora’s supposed delicacy was a stupid thing for him to have said, because Leonora stood nearly a full head taller than Di Luna, and, despite the fact that he was a soldier, and, to give him credit for his efforts, a far more effective and active one than many noblemen, he was fragile and - dare she say it - delicate to look at. Leonora was fairly confident that she could pick him up and put him out the window if she particularly needed to. As it was, she didn’t feel particularly threatened by him - it was almost like a toddler pushing the boundaries with a new nurse, and that was nothing that Leonora couldn’t deal with, even if it was coming from a nobleman who was closer to thirty years old than her age.

“What makes you think that I’m too weak to understand whatever is troubling you?” He tensed slightly at the mention of him being troubled. “Because there is something that’s troubling you, isn’t there?” She paused to make sure not only that she was on the right track but that her sudden assault hadn’t left him feeling the wrong sort of threatened. Instead, she could see that he was chewing on the inside of his lip in a way that made him look both nervous and far, far younger than his twenty-seven years.

“You can’t possibly want to understand the feelings of somebody whose advances you’ve spent months valiantly ignoring.” This was not a valid answer.

“Did you ever concern that I possibly didn’t want you to be pursuing me?”

“What, because I’m—”

“Because I’m not attracted to you, Fadrique,” Leonora shot back, before he had a chance to make a comment about his gender, or their prior knowledge of each other, because if she was right and he was in love with his master, Ferrando was also aware of Di Luna’s past, and it clearly didn’t bother him that Di Luna had transitioned. More to the point, since it was Leonora and not Ferrando who was the topic of conversation (right now), Manrico’s situation was the same as Di Luna’s. Leonora really didn’t care about that aspect of the relationship, and even if it was something that bothered her, there were ways in which a couple could work around it. “Not everything is about you, you know.” There were two reasons that she said this in this way. Partly simply because it was true. She just wasn’t attracted to Di Luna, and that had nothing to do with anything except for whatever it was that made people attracted to other people. Whatever quality a person needed to have to attract Leonora, he simply didn’t have it.

Secondly, though, Leonora knew that, for all his bravado and his appearance of confidence, Di Luna was truly insecure about himself, about who he had been and how that didn’t fit with who he was now. Even if she wasn’t attracted to him, and even if she thought he was a spoiled, selfish brat who had been over-indulged by people who didn’t know what to do with a traumatised noble child other than to cosset and indulge and dote upon him, she didn’t want that for him. It wasn’t that she thought that all his problems would suddenly dissipate and he would be a changed and exalted person if she somehow “fixed” him - it was more just that she didn’t want him to be sad.

“What do you mean?”

Leonora knew that he didn’t mean “what do you mean, not everything is about me?”, but she still had to hold back a laugh, because it really was something that Di Luna might say.

“I mean that I’ve known you for years.”

“That’s the problem. You’ve known me for too long.”

Well, that explained a lot. “And any trepidation I might have felt about who you are would have come out years ago if it really was something that I had a problem with.” She knew that she had to tread carefully here, but God how much she longed to trample through the carefully-maintained and utterly nonsensical ornamental maze of Di Luna’s mind. “I truly don’t want to push you on the subject,” she said, “and I know that nobles don’t always marry for love, but I also know that that doesn’t mean that we have to hate each other.” She shrugged. “That’s just something that you can think about.”

“What are you trying to get me to say?”

“An apology for standing outside my window every night when I was trying to sleep and trying to make me fall in love with you would be nice.” But she didn’t expect it any time soon. “I’m not trying to get anything out of you. I just want you to know that ‘in love’ and ‘outright hate’ aren’t the only possible options for a relationship.” And I want to see you throw yourself at Ferrando and then ride off into the sunset with him, because you clearly need him far more than you need me, but one step at a time.

Di Luna continued to look pensive. Leonora could see a potential opportunity to try to broach an adjacent subject to what she needed to say, but she wasn’t sure of it.  
“What was I supposed to do?” The shirt he was wearing, Leonora noticed suddenly, was both far too big for him, and not made of a fabric that was commonly worn by noblemen. She smiled knowingly before she could stop herself from doing it.

“Ask politely and then stop pushing after I said no?” Leonora suggested. When he neither laughed nor seemed mortally offended by the suggestion that he not foist himself upon a woman who wasn’t attracted to him, Leonora continued, far more cautiously this time. “Fadrique… I remember a conversation I had with the queen once.” Di Luna looked confused by the sudden change of subject and the cautious tone of Leonora’s voice, but he sat down to listen anyway. This was progress. Leonora knew that she would have to tread carefully from here on out, however tempting it was to just outright state what she wanted to say. “It was why I was thinking about how we needn’t be in love to be married,” she explained. “She was saying that a good many nobles, even if they got on well with their spouses, would take lovers.”

“Oh, that’s what this was about?” Di Luna got up again, looking offended but also somehow a little relieved, and made to go back out of the door. Rather than allowing him to continue to dodge all attempts at communication with her, Leonora caught his wrist again, and he quickly ceded, but still didn’t sit back down. “You can’t have your troubadour back, you know. Even if he wasn’t low-born, and even if I didn’t hate him, I think…” He trailed off.

“That wasn’t what I meant,” Leonora said, deciding against asking after the end of his sentence. She was fairly sure of what it would be in any case. “I had never had a lover before Manrico,” she explained, “but the Queen told me that sometimes noble ladies would take other women for their lovers.” Di Luna didn’t say anything, but she could see him grip onto the sleeve of probably-not-his shirt, even if he thought he was hiding it. “And sometimes, noblemen would lie with other men in the same way.”

This, on the other hand, did provoke a reaction, but one far from what she had been expecting. Leonora had anticipated maybe feigned disgust, or denial, or even anger or forced and uncomfortable laughter. What she had not expected, however, was for Di Luna to almost collapse in on himself like a besieged building - which he was, she supposed - and burst into tears. It felt like she was skipping a few steps on the road to getting him to admit that he was in love with Ferrando, but, at the same time, it wasn’t entirely a bad result, considering how obnoxious and clearly in denial Di Luna had been until this moment.

Still, Leonora had to feel sorry for him, and also try to work out what, exactly, it was that had suddenly set him off, because she was sure that she wouldn’t get a straight answer out of him when he was in this state. Rather than continuing to try to talk to him about whatever it was that was wrong with him, Leonora decided that he had probably been berated enough for one day, and that if he was really upset then he probably didn’t deserve to just be left to his misery.

He was sitting on the floor now with his head in his hands, not so much sobbing as grizzling quietly. Leonora slid down off the seat that she was sat on, landing on her knees beside Di Luna, and put her arms around him. Leonora was rarely inclined to hug anybody, or at least anybody who wasn’t Manrico (and she hadn’t seen him in a month), and she knew that Di Luna was usually too frantic to be able to be hugged. But right now, it felt like the only thing that she could do, and the only thing that it would have been appropriate to do. When Di Luna was like that, she really couldn’t bring herself to continue to berate him. Her point had been made, and clearly Di Luna was rethinking his attitude.

He was still clinging to Leonora after a few minutes, but she felt fairly confident that he was no longer crying, so she carefully disengaged him from where he had wound himself around her. Now they were sat together on the floor, Di Luna’s head resting on her shoulder and him trying to avoid looking at her. Leonora didn’t mind indulging his sadness a little bit, but given how quickly he had reacted (or perhaps overreacted) to her comment, it was clearly something that needed some amount of talking about, even if that would probably involve her forcing the subject with him.

“Who is it, then?” Leonora asked, letting Di Luna continue sitting with his head on her shoulder even though she wasn’t too keen on the sensation.

“Who said it was about anybody in particular?” Di Luna replied, immediately on the defensive in a way that incriminated him further.

“So, you just happened to burst into tears when I mentioned that some noblemen fuck other men?” Leonora rolled her eyes. “It’s obviously somebody. If you don’t want me torturing it out of you, you can tell me, but if not I seem to be able to get whatever I want from you.”

“What are you sacrificing in exchange for the knowledge of who I want to fuck me?” Di Luna asked.

At least he had stopped sniffling, which was a start. But God, Leonora wished that he had a mood available other than either “miserable” or “insufferable”. She pushed him over rather than saying anything that could upset him, though, because this hardly felt like the time. “I already know who it is, so you might as well just tell me now and spare yourself the torment,” she laughed.

“How would you know?” Di Luna said. He hadn’t got back up after she pushed him over, and was now lying on his side on the floor, which would have been a lot funnier if Leonora wasn’t finding the whole situation of trying to get her husband to admit to being in love with another man so stressful. It was almost like trying to diffuse a trap without getting caught in its mechanism, although (she hoped) without the attendant risk of losing her foot if she failed. “You just said you aren’t interested in me.”

“I said I’m not attracted to you,” Leonora corrected him. She tried not to be too irritable about it, because he was clearly feeling fragile about the whole subject, but it really did feel like she was just walking around in circles. “There are plenty of people I find interesting who I’m not also attracted to.” Regardless of the fact that this was true, Leonora could tell from his expression that this had gone right over Leonora’s head. “Also I have eyes,” she added.

That, at least, produced at least some reaction in Di Luna. He sat up again, looking somewhere between confused and concerned. “Who do you mean?”

“You wouldn’t be asking who I meant if you didn’t already know who I meant, Fadrique,” Leonora said smugly. Granted, she couldn’t be completely sure, not without Di Luna actually confirming it, but she was quite happy to allow him to do the leg-work and then act like she had somehow known for sure all along when he inevitably broke and told her. “I know who it is you’re in love with. I’m not that stupid.”

“Go on, then.” Di Luna almost seemed to be challenging her.

“It’s—”

“It is not,” Di Luna interrupted her.

“You didn’t even let me say who I think,” Leonora said. “How could you possibly know that it isn’t Ferrando that you’re in love with when you hadn’t even given me the opportunity to say his name?”

For a second, Leonora thought based on his expression - a combination of horror and frustration, and maybe even a little embarrassment - that Di Luna was just going to leave the room rather than even trying to continue the conversation. Instead, he leaned his head back, looking as though he was hoping that the ground would open up under him and just consume him there and then. Unfortunately for him but fortunately for Leonora, who was very keen to continue with this conversation, it did not, so he was forced to continue talking to her - or rather, allowing her to talk at him.

“How did you know?” he finally asked. “Did somebody… tell you?”

Leonora didn’t want to say that she had really just been guessing and had apparently been lucky (or rather, she had been perceptive, and also correct), so instead she just smiled. “They might have done.”

Di Luna went very red, for a reason that Leonora wasn’t sure about but was extremely curious to know. Since she was already prying, she decided that she might as well try to figure out what had suddenly made Di Luna so embarrassed that he could barely even manage to look at her. Of course, given that Di Luna had thought that somebody had told her about him and Ferrando, and that that was what had made him turn so red, she could make an educated guess. But she hadn’t had a normal conversation with Di Luna in so long that she just wanted to carry this one while she could. The fact that he was clearly so wrong-footed and embarrassed by it without being angry was just a plus.

“I didn’t think she heard,” Di Luna groaned.

“Heard?” Leonora spluttered. “I thought you had just been - whatever the equivalent of you standing in my garden at night trying to talk me into a marriage with you would have been!” She was laughing now, even though she couldn’t shake the feeling that she shouldn’t have been, because clearly this was something that Di Luna had been troubled by for some time, but at the same time the fact that Di Luna had been nervously pining over somebody he had slept with and who had clearly also been pining over him was almost pathetic in how laughable it was. “Does he know?” Leonora asked, before realising that this probably wasn’t the most intelligent question, even if it was worth asking.

“He knows I slept with him,” Di Luna said, sarcastically enough that it was worth the mild embarrassment of asking a question with an obvious answer. “I think he just thinks it was… what, a one-off?” He shrugged. “Or maybe he thinks…” He trailed off. “I don’t know what I think he thinks, other than that he probably thinks I’m an idiot.”

That’s because you are, Leonora thought, but she didn’t say it out loud in spite of the urge to do so. “You should tell him, then.”

“But—”

“Well, you managed to get me to marry you without me sleeping with you first,” Leonora pointed out. “I’m sure you could manage to get Ferrando to do whatever you wanted, if you tried.”

“What I want is for him to talk to me,” Di Luna groaned. Leonora put her head to one side, but didn’t ask what he meant just yet. Di Luna seemed to be at least somewhat willing to open up about his feelings at the moment, and she saw no reason to push him to do something he was already more comfortable with now that he knew that Leonora wasn’t aggressively against him and they were on the same page. “He disagreed with me marrying you, and he especially resented me letting Manrico and his mother go.”

“Of course he did,” Leonora groaned, more to herself than to Di Luna, but it seemed to have the same effect on both of them. “He found—”

“V—. I know.” That was clearly as much as Di Luna wanted to talk about that. Leonora backed off when she realised and patted his shoulder apologetically. “He’s not been in the palace or even let me talk to him since we argued about it.” He clearly didn’t want to discuss the subject of the argument. Leonora didn’t ask, because she could guess what it was. “I think he’s in the barracks, but I don’t even know that, because I don’t want to annoy him any more than I already have done.”

“If it’s taken you this long to come to terms with it,” Leonora suggested, “then maybe you’ll be more ready to talk about it now.” Di Luna didn’t say anything, but Leonora could tell that he was thinking about it. “Not now, because it’s nearly midnight, and most people sleep at night. But you should speak to him first thing tomorrow.”

“I don’t know,” Di Luna said. “I won’t know what to say.”

“You can sleep with him but you can’t tell him that you’re in love with him?” Leonora didn’t see too much difference between the two, considering that Manrico had needed a lot of time to have sex for the first time, but had been incredibly effusive with telling Leonora that he was in love with her, almost to the point that it had been annoying. Well, she supposed that they were different people - and she hadn’t known Manrico for as long as Di Luna and Ferrando had known each other, _and_ Manrico was considerably younger than either Di Luna _or_ Ferrando. It was probably a bigger thing for Ferrando and Di Luna than it had been for her and Manrico.

“You slept with me,” Di Luna pointed out. “It’s not that big of a thing for everybody.”

“And you immediately declared that you were in love with me without any thought when you realised.”

“I know.”

“And then you refused to drop the subject for years of your life.”

“I know.”

“And now,” she laughed, “you’re telling me that you’re in love with another man, and you probably have been all this time.”

Even Di Luna seemed to see the humour in that - but Leonora could still tell that he wasn’t wholly comfortable talking about it, or even thinking about it with somebody else there. Rather than continuing to make him discuss his feelings, because God knew that Di Luna was probably dreadful enough at that on his own, she decided that enough was probably enough by now. She was tired, and she could tell that he was too, so she decided that it would be best to leave him alone to think about the conversation he would have to have with Ferrando soon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, the fact that i need to keep track of who knows that manrico is trans and who doesn't is just a fucking burden. that's why i censor his birth name throughout, regardless of who is saying it. (also because, even though i know what his birth name is, i didn't actually decide on one for di luna and i didn't want it to seem unbalanced when the brothers' birth names inevitably came up.)
> 
> uh, most of the historical stuff, even the less believable things and especially the bits about medieval sexuality (apart from ines suggesting that all nobles and soldiers are gay, which is just. ya know.), were Actually True. they really did think that both parties had to finish in order for a baby to be conceived... but they also didn't want you enjoying sex _too_ much, because it was only supposed to be for the purposes of reproduction, so... instructions unclear.


	3. CHAPTER TWO

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> manrico time. none shall be spared from seeing a Nice Dude.
> 
> also, just so you know, Manrico Isn't Actually Bad. it's all the fault of directors who forget to give him a fucking personality so all he does is be mean to leonora and that's the lasting impression of him we're left with, so i've tried to give him some Actual Personality here. same with azucena and ruiz.

The mountains were quiet.

Or rather, they should have been.

Manrico and Azucena had fled back here after the count had let them go, somehow without executing them, which Azucena thanked God, or whatever it was that had been preventing her from dying until now, for that fact every day. Unfortunately, Manrico had now become a problem. They had been forced to leave without Leonora, even though Manrico’s attempt to get her back from at first the convent and then from the Count had been the driving force behind his entire scheme, which had nearly resulted in the deaths of not just him and his mother but, Azucena couldn’t help but think, Leonora.

He was not taking kindly to separation from Leonora.

This was rapidly beginning to approach the level whereby Azucena was considering mounting an assault on the Aljáferia Palace, slaughtering the Count, and then returning to Manrico with Leonora in tow, just so that she could shut him up. That said, when she thought too hard about that, it made her very nervous: she had thought that she was safe from the previous Count’s utterly rabid army officer, but he had somehow realised who she was just as she was on the verge of being released back to continue searching for her idiot son.

This was just more evidence that Manrico was certainly a Noble, and not really her son. Her child would never be so stupid as to wander directly into an obvious trap after disappearing for weeks, or at least she hoped that they would not. There was, of course, no way to know what the real Manrico would have been like at this point in… her? His? Their? Life. She had never even considered the thought that a person’s in-built sense of their gender and their body could be mismatched until the then six-year-old not yet Manrico had burst into inconsolable tears at the thought of wearing a dress. By that logic, it was entirely possible that her real son would not actually have turned out to be her son, but had actually been her daughter, or neither a son nor a daughter, she supposed.

Fortunately, Azucena had been all too happy to take Manrico’s desire to transition completely in her stride and not fuss about the issue. Children, she knew, were their own people: yes, she could give Manrico advice, and his new name, but she couldn’t - and shouldn’t presume to - bend him to her will. No matter how stupid his actions were. Running off to try to rescue his lover when he still had open and healing wounds was certainly a unique example of Manrico’s stupidity, but it was by far the only example. Azucena had thought for sure when she had accidentally told Manrico that she had thrown her own child onto the fire rather than the Count’s younger child.

Fortunately, while Manrico was strong, and kind, and loving, and brave, and had many other good traits besides, he was also almost painfully stupid. Nobles always were, she thought smugly. She, on the other hand, was intelligent and sensible, even if she wasn’t especially brave, and even if she had probably made entirely the wrong decision in trying to burn the baby, rather than just stealing the two-year-old future Manrico. She wouldn’t have minded having two children, even if Manrico had grown up to be completely maddening.

Fortunately, Azucena was also, in addition to her other good traits, very, very patient with Manrico and his current vile mood. It seemed that his entire routine was to wake up, and then sulk until he was able to go to bed. Azucena didn’t want to remind him that actually, he was quite lucky to be alive, considering how feral and rabid the count and his terrifying army officer had been when they had captured the two of them, but she was getting rapidly closer to the point where she sat him down and told him that he really had nothing to complain about, because what was the point of having a lover when he was also a dead man?

No, it was much better for him to be bereft of Leonora (to whom Azucena had no objection, from what little conversation they had had before Azucena and Manrico had had to flee) but alive than it was for him to be dead, but also with Leonora - because the Count was a spoiled, rich brat and Azucena had no doubt that he would have killed her too rather than let her stay with Manrico, whom she loved, even if he was an idiot. It was only a matter of making him see how fortunate he was to be alive, which he was valiantly resisting realising.

“Son.” Fortunately, Manrico literally never lost his appetite. His problem was that he charged headlong into things, but he wouldn’t do so on an empty stomach. It was one less thing for Azucena, who was short, and plump despite barely eating a fraction of what her incredibly tall and muscular son ate, to worry about. “I think it is time that I told you who your father was.”

Manrico paused, looking confused, with his mouth full of bread, as his mother spoke. Fortunately, even when he was in the depths of his current self-indulgent misery, he knew better than to speak with his mouth full, which infuriated Azucena, and swallowed the bread before saying, “You have literally never mentioned my father before just now.”

“You aren’t very bright,” Azucena said dryly. “I didn’t want you going through life thinking that you just sprung from the earth with no explanation.” She hadn’t loved the father of the previous Manrico (the baby had actually been called García, but she hadn’t dared suggest that name when Manrico had needed a new one. Given how Manrico now looked and acted, she had chosen a good name for her son), but she had wanted a child, and she had known how children happened.

“Who was he, then?” Manrico sat down on the ground, and Azucena sat down on the stump of a tree across from him. “Some… huge military commander?” he suggested.

“Because I can’t see that I could have come from two people of your height.” He was still growing, and still Azucena only barely reached his chest when they were both stood up. It really was remarkable, considering how both the previous Count and his brother looked. Azucena had no idea where Manrico’s height and general shape, as well as his ease in and enjoyment for building muscle, had come from.

“You could say that,” Azucena conceded, because the Count had been a military man. Unfortunately, he had also been a failure for the most part: much of his land had been confiscated or forfeited in war, aside from the small county which he now ruled. He had had jurisdiction over the city of Segorb, but now the present Count’s dominion barely extended a few miles, and his son certainly wasn’t rich. The new Count, however, was a far better military commander - one of the only similarities that Azucena could see between him and Manrico.

“So who was he?” Manrico asked. “And why tell me all this now?”

“Because you refuse to stop acting as though the world has ended because Leonora married the Count.” He looked a little offended, but didn’t say anything. “Things could always be worse than they are now. Remember that.”

Manrico stared at her. “I suppose it could,” he conceded.

“You certainly haven’t thrown any babies into a fire - or burned anybody.”

Manrico nodded, but then looked taken aback and confused. “What does that have to do with anything?” Maybe he wasn’t as stupid and oblivious as he seemed. “I don’t think the Count did anything awful to any of my men,” he pointed out.

“No, no he didn’t.” Manrico was just looking more and more confused, but Azucena hardly cared. “Your father was not a good man.” She decided to leave it at that for now, because she could tell that Manrico was starting to lose interest, and she needed to pull him back into the story. She didn’t know quite how she was going to explain what she had done, and how she had come to be raising Manrico, to him, not when he was already emotionally wounded - not that Azucena saw why. He had barely known Leonora for a few months, but she supposed that teenagers were dramatic about their relationships.

“What sort of bad?”

“Your father was the sort of bad person who enjoyed persecuting people who didn’t do exactly as he liked.” She paused to see if she could detect any dawning look of realisation on Manrico’s face. He looked just as confused as ever, but she couldn’t tell if that was just the way he looked or if he was starting to realise. “People like my mother.”

“People… like your mother, or ‘your mother’?” Manrico asked. Maybe he did have more brains than she gave him credit for. He paused again, as though waiting for her to give him the answer. “Mother - was… was the Count my father?”

Looking at his expression, Azucena didn’t know how to answer. She couldn’t tell if he was horrified, or having some sort of idea that he thought was particularly intelligent but that would probably leave him dead, or just completely blank and trying to make it seem like he knew what she was getting at. She decided to press on carefully. “Yes, Manrico. The Count was your father.”

“You… and the Count?” Azucena said nothing, partly because she didn’t want either to lie or to tell him the exact truth. “So… the Count is my half-brother?”

“You and the Count are brothers.” Somehow, Azucena wasn’t upset. It was almost surreal that she was having this conversation with Manrico for a second time and he still wasn’t getting the point. She hoped that, if she told him outright that they were brothers, Manrico would realise that he was the Count’s missing child.

“So… he needn’t object to my marrying Leonora?” Nobody could say that Manrico wasn’t dedicated, but he was dedicated to exactly the wrong thing. “Well… I’m sure he could raise an exception, especially now that they’re already married, but… but surely he wouldn’t have a reason to hate me any more, if he knew that I was secretly his half-brother?” He paused again. “But if I’m illegitimate… But he’s older than me.”

It was remarkable that he could simultaneously be so close to and so far from the actual facts of the situation. Azucena wasn’t sure whether to let him figure it out for himself or just to tell him outright, but at the same time it almost seemed cruel not to at least give him some help. “Son,” she said, more gently, “do you remember, before you went to take Leonora from the convent, I told you about my mother’s death?”

“Yes?” Manrico just looked confused. He was a good boy, but he could clearly only think about one thing at once, not that Azucena could blame him with how abrupt this must have seemed, and how much there was for him to understand. “Your mother was burned by the father of the current Count…” He frowned. “And, I suppose, my father, also.” Azucena nodded encouragingly. “So you stole the Count’s child from the castle, and…” He was so close to grasping what was happening. Azucena almost didn’t want to further disturb his innocence on the matter.

“And you remember, when you tried to kill the Count, but—”

“—But I couldn’t bring myself to?”

Azucena nodded, but didn’t give Manrico any further information.

”What does that have to do with anything?”

“You and the Count are more than just half brothers,” Azucena said, instead of giving him a straight answer.

Manrico paused again, his eyes wide. “Mother - the baby that you—” He stared at her as though he didn’t recognise her. “It wasn’t…” He paused again, searching for the words. “That baby wasn’t V—, was it?” Azucena shook her head, wondering how he had managed to suddenly arrive at this conclusion. His way of thinking made no sense to Azucena, but at least he had got there eventually. “You… and then you swapped the babies? And then… as though nothing…?” The strange thing was that Manrico didn’t sound angry, he just sounded confused, as though the idea that Azucena would do this was confusing to him on some visceral level. “And the Count and I are brothers?”

“You and the Count are full brothers,” she said, before realising that she didn’t actually know that they were. “Or you are as far as I know.”

“Hm.” Azucena wasn’t sure if Manrico had secretly figured this out some time ago, or if he was just too surprised to process the issue at this point, but whatever the method by which he had realised was, his reaction was unintentionally hilarious. It was a wonder that she managed not to laugh at him. “And he… doesn’t know?” Manrico continued.

“No, of course he doesn’t know,” Azucena was surprised that he had even asked, but it must have been a lot for him to process him.

“Was Manrico the first baby’s name?”

“No. I called him García.”

“And… nobody reacted to the fact that you suddenly had a daughter - or a ‘daughter’ - instead of a son?”

“No, they knew what had… happened. I didn’t want to talk about it and they all respected that.”

“I suppose you wouldn’t, if that had happened,” Manrico said, his tone far more thoughtful than his words perhaps deserved. Azucena knew that Manrico perhaps wasn’t the brightest - but what he lacked in intelligence he easily made up for with his good nature and kindness. Even if he was moody now, as well he might be, he had been as kind as ever to the children of their friends. “So… there’s really no reason for the Count to object to me marrying Leonora?” He paused again. “Or for his army officer to be so resentful towards you.”

Azucena hadn’t even thought about that aspect of it, but he was completely right. If the baby that he thought he had found the body of was actually alive and well (and exceptionally stupid to match his brother), then there was no reason for Ferrando to hate her as much as he did. Unfortunately, that would mean convincing him of the truth to - but Manrico probably looked enough like at least one of his parents that he would be convinced. She just hoped, if it would be one or the other as it probably would (even aged only two as he had been when he had died, García had clearly looked only like her and bore no resemblance to his father), it was his mother that he looked like, and not his father.

“Do you want to tell the Count?” Azucena asked, after letting Manrico sit in silence for a few seconds.

“How can I?” Manrico asked, which Azucena supposed was a fair point. “He made it perfectly clear that he was giving me enough clemency to get far enough away that he would never again see me, but that if he did then he would kill me.” Azucena made a face. “And clearly, whatever it was that influenced me to spare him didn’t make him want to spare me when he had the chance.”

“You’re still here, aren’t you?” Azucena asked.

“No, I mean… I mean when I met him and Leonora in the garden at the palace.” Azucena put her head slightly to one side. “I told you the first time you tried to tell me who I am,” Manrico went on. “He was disarmed and wounded, and on the ground, and I could have killed him then, but for some reason I couldn’t bring myself to.”

Azucena looked curious now. “Do you remember anything about the first two years of your life, or is it just a blur?” she asked.

“What, because I couldn’t kill him even though he’s supposed to be my sworn enemy?” Azucena nodded. “I don’t think I remember any of it,” Manrico said, “but I can’t say for sure, because I don’t know what I can’t remember.”

Since he just looked confused now, Azucena decided that it might be best that she just put him out of his misery for the time being by changing the subject in its entirety. “Since you’re the Count’s long lost brother, I can’t see that he would continue to object to your presence on his land, not if he knew who you were,” she said. “He was very clear when he had his officer captured me that he still believed that you were alive.”

“How so?”

“When I told him that I had lived in Biscaya, he insisted on asking if I had heard about the child of a Count who had been abducted fifteen years ago.”

“You didn’t tell him, I trust?”

“No.”

“And?” Manrico said.

“And he seemed to believe me. He was just about to let me go before his army officer recognised me.” Manrico nodded, but he didn’t say anything else, instead waiting for his mother to continue explaining what had happened to him. “I had recognised him immediately, but I thought that maybe enough time would have passed that he wouldn’t remember me.”

“And he… did he think I was still alive?”

“I couldn’t say for sure,” Azucena said. “I think at that point he was too angry to think anything.” She shrugged. “You know how men are.”

“I know how soldiers are,” Manrico half-joked. He hadn’t ever really considered himself to be one of Count Urquell’s soldiers - an attitude which had got him promoted even though really he had just wanted to return home to the mountains and write more music. Still, it meant that he was paid better, and he was mostly left alone because the other men had little interest in bothering an officer such as Manrico. “So, how are we going to convince the Count to listen to you and believe that I really am V—?” he asked.

Azucena hadn’t thought about that at all yet. In all truth, she had thought that she would never tell her son who he was, because he was clearly happy thinking he was a relative nobody who lived in the mountains, rather than knowing that he was the lost child of the old Count Di Luna. She also wasn’t particularly good at thinking on her feet, but nor was Manrico, really, so at least he couldn’t gripe about his mother not having any idea how to help in this situation.

“I don’t think either he or his officer would believe me,” she said. “And if either of us returned there, then I expect they would kill us right away, or at least have somebody kill us.”

“But you said that it seemed like the Count wanted to believe that I was alive?” Manrico prompted her. “Do you think he might believe that even now?”

“I couldn’t say.” From what Azucena knew, the Count had sworn to find the stolen baby. She had heard distantly shortly after she had fled the grounds of the Palace, but she had barely been aware of it at the time, and she wasn’t sure if he had since given up on his mission, since she hadn’t heard anything about any concerted effort to locate the stolen child. That, though, could have been down to the fact that they were mistakenly looking for a girl, which Manrico was not, and she was hardly sending out notices to the family of the baby she had stolen updating them on his life.

In any case, considering what she had overheard when she had been in the camp, it seemed likely that the officer was more than happy just to follow his master wherever the Count happened to lead him. (And, from what she had overheard, practically immediately after she had been thrown into a cell, the officer seemed to be willing to do just about anything for his Master. It had taken Azucena quite a while to stop accidentally remembering overhearing that experience. Even the soldier guarding her had looked a little embarrassed, and the next day neither the Count nor his officer had been able to look her in the eye, even though they apparently had taken her prisoner.)

“I think,” Manrico said slowly, “that if the Count is that desperate to believe that I might still be alive, then he would absolutely believe you.”

“It’s not him that I’m concerned about,” Azucena said. “I would say he’s stupid enough that he would probably have believed that Leonora was actually in love with him, rather than just trying to get you to safety.” Even though he was still a bit sensitive about the fact that Leonora had stayed behind, Manrico managed to laugh at that. “That officer, on the other hand…” Azucena shook her head. “I wouldn’t trust him anywhere near either of us.”

“I remember he was at the nunnery,” Manrico said, seeming confused. “He just seemed to think that the Count needed to sort his problems out for himself, rather than… whatever it was he was trying to do, because I know Leonora would never have gone with him.”

“Really?” Azucena said. “I remember he was the one who was trying to persuade the Count to let him kill me.”

“He was?”

Manrico looked a little startled, considering how frustrated and tired he had looked when Manrico had seen him in the nunnery. There had been about ten of Manrico’s soldiers surrounding him with weapons at his throat at one point but he hadn’t even had his sword drawn; he had just been watching Di Luna with a dull expression, almost as though he was thinking ‘God, of course you’re doing this, you idiot’. He was the enemy, yes, but Manrico wasn’t - or rather hadn’t been - sure that he was really a dangerous one.

“I think he was close to the previous count,” Azucena explained - but that just raised further questions in her mind. “He would certainly kill me if he saw me in the palace grounds,” Azucena said. “He was the one who caught my mother and dragged her to the scaffold.” Manrico looked even more stunned by this news. “And when I stole the baby from the castle, I made sure that he was the one who found the body.”

“But he didn’t find the body that he thought he did,” Manrico pointed out. “Surely, even if he’s that determined to get revenge…” He frowned. “Well, I can’t see that it would do him much good,” he said, “but surely if ought to know, if only for your sake.”

“I’m quite sure, Manrico, that he’ll have an outlet for his feelings,” Azucena said, almost smugly. The fact that she knew what they had been doing probably wouldn’t give Azucena any leverage against him, considering that the other soldiers must have heard what they had been doing - the one who had been guarding her certainly had been aware - but she felt some sort of smug pride about the fact that she did know.

“Well,” Manrico said, “we could take Ruiz with us? He managed to get Leonora into the palace undetected, and with her and the Count…” He didn’t think for too long about that, because the idea of his lover and… well, he supposed his brother together took him on a wild emotional journey ranging from sadness, to disgust, to outright confusion, because technically that also made her his sister-in-law now, if they really had married. “Well, they’ll be distracted. Ruiz might be able to get an audience with him, and then…”

“And then I suppose I could tell him,” Azucena said. “He really didn’t seem to hate me at first; he would have let me go if his Officer hadn’t recognised me.”

* * *

Ruiz had thought, for a short while, that maybe he would be in for a quiet life. Manrico had returned from his imprisonment apparently chastened, and Azucena too had seemed calmer than either Manrico or Ruiz had thought that she was capable of being. For once, she was fully coherent, not rambling about children dropped into fires or vengeance, but having normal conversations not just with Manrico and Ruiz but with others in the camp.

Ruiz was not particularly impressed, therefore, when Manrico came barreling into his tent at what he thought was probably about half-past-five in the morning.

Manrico had always been disgustingly tall - even as a sickly child he had been taller than the other children of his age, and he still hadn’t stopped growing, by the look of it. When he had gone away he had been a good head and a half taller than Ruiz, who was fairly strong but still no match for his friend (or at least not a match physically. Intellectually, Ruiz could think circles around Manrico, mostly because he was actually capable of sitting down and, well, thinking), but he had been able to sit up in Ruiz’s tent. Now, though, he was forced to duck down slightly or distort the fabric of his friend’s tent.

Usually Ruiz would have immediately thrown him out, but there was a look on his face that made him think that Manrico had something truly exciting to say to him. “My mother wants you,” he said. When Ruiz looked annoyed that this was what he had been woken up in aid of, Manrico added, “she’s made a loaf of bread.”

Ruiz knew that Manrico could easily eat an entire loaf of bread in about half an hour, with both his massive stature and impressive musculature, so Ruiz was forced to kick him out of the tent after ordering him not to move from outside so that he could get dressed. Manrico had woken him before he had had a chance to put even a shirt on. Manrico very much was not his type, and he didn’t want him seeing him any more than shirtless. (Considering that Manrico had transitioned a little after reaching puberty, which he had been too late to stop with a hysterectomy, the fact that Manrico looked better than Ruiz without a shirt on felt like something of an injustice. But it was a deliberate choice, so Ruiz couldn’t really begrudge him it.)

Ruiz was dressed in record time, although he was still obviously bleary and half asleep, and he let Manrico drag him to where Azucena was sat, kneading another ball of dough after removing the other now cooked loaf from the open fire. Clearly, she knew her son and his eating habits after raising him for just over eighteen years: she threw the first loaf of bread into Ruiz’s hands, cuffing at Manrico to stop him from stealing all the food before she and Ruiz had the chance to eat.

“Why did you want me so urgently?” Ruiz knew that it wasn’t just to share breakfast. Manrico and Azucena both knew that he wasn’t a morning person, and even if this didn’t bother Manrico, he knew that Azucena would stop him from doing anything particularly annoying. The only reason that she would allow Manrico to go and bother him this early in the morning was if there was something that desperately needed attending to. Whatever it was clearly had Manrico very excited, but he couldn’t shake the fact that Azucena looked less than overjoyed.

It was a shame that she had fared so poorly over the course of her life, what with her first child dying unexpectedly a couple of years before Manrico was born, and the trouble that she had had with a young Manrico. Ruiz thought that Azucena was wonderful; she was unfailingly kind, even though he was sure that having a son as rash and dramatic as Manrico must have been a constant headache for the poor woman. He had even heard that she had been kind to the Count when she had met him, sensing that he was in need of a maternal figure. Considering how deranged the man had seemed in the nunnery a few months ago, Ruiz couldn’t imagine feeling anything other than vague disgust for the Count, however, vulnerable he seemed.

“Do you remember, Ruiz,” Azucena asked, “when you first met Manrico?”

“Yes, he was a newborn.”

Azucena and Manrico both looked confused at that one. Rather than confronting what had his friend and his mother so puzzled by what he had thought was an obvious statement, Ruiz set about hollowing out the roll of bread that he held.

“Ruiz, my friend, what do you think a baby can do?” Manrico asked, almost laughing.

“How would I know?” Ruiz asked. “I don’t have children.”

“Do you think a newborn baby can talk?” Azucena clarified.

“He couldn’t talk. You…” He turned to Manrico. “You sort of made sounds, but it wasn’t really talking.”

“He screamed for three straight weeks.” Azucena’s tone was almost hilariously dry. “And he hasn’t stopped caterwauling since.”

“I’m talented,” Manrico joked.

Ruiz laughed at the joke, but he stopped quickly. Manrico and Azucena were both being strangely cryptic, and he wasn’t sure he liked it, considering how open Manrico usually was about his emotions, especially when he was talking to Ruiz. “I’m sure this wasn’t why you woke me up, though, Manrico,” he pointed out. “What was it about when Manrico was a baby that you wanted to ask me about?”

“He wasn’t a newborn baby when you first met him,” Azucena explained. Ruiz had been a sensitive child, and had been curious about the child wrapped in a bundle of blankets that Azucena had been cradling when he had first met her. Azucena had been glad just to have somebody to watch him so that she could try to process what had just happened, and Manrico and Ruiz had been friends ever since, even though Manrico had barely been aware of the concept of other people at the time. “When you first met Manrico, he was… about twenty months old, I think,” Azucena said.

“You… think?” Ruiz looked puzzled. “How is it possible for you… just not to know when your son was born?” Maybe he hadn’t phrased it too politely, but Azucena seemed to be willing to take it in her stride. Manrico also didn’t look too upset, so Ruiz took that as a cue to continue. “I remember… I remember you told me he was a baby, in any case,” he said.

“Twenty months is a baby,” Azucena said. “He was still sleeping in a cradle.” Ruiz wasn’t sure about that, but he didn’t know enough about babies or infant development to dispute it. “The reason that I don’t know exactly when Manrico was born is that he is not my son.”

For a second, Ruiz thought this was a very delayed push-back against Manrico’s transition, but he realised quickly that this was not the case, and that she quite literally meant that Manrico was not her biological child, but was the result of the union between two other mysterious people. When he looked at the two of them, sat side by side as they were in the rising sun, Ruiz wondered how he hadn’t realised this before. Azucena and Manrico looked nothing alike. There was certainly something familiar in Manrico’s features, other than the fact that Ruiz had seen him practically every day for sixteen years, but it wasn’t the fact that he resembled Azucena. She was somewhat plump, with rounded features, while, in spite of his muscular form, Manrico had light, almost bird-light features. Somewhat pointy, rather than slightly curved like his mother was.

“She only told me yesterday,” Manrico explained. Ruiz frowned. “Not that you hadn’t tried before,” he said, now turning to his mother, who nodded. “I didn’t realise; it was just after I had been injured by the Count and I couldn’t think straight because I was in so much pain.”

“That would be your excuse,” Azucena said.

“So… who are you?” Ruiz asked, looking at Manrico as though his face, and the fact that he knew he had seen somebody who looked like that before somewhere, would be able to answer the question instead of Manrico. “Or rather, whose child are you?”

“That’s the issue,” Azucena said. “Both of Manrico’s birth parents are dead - but his entire family are not.”

“And you want to find them?”

“I know where - and who - my remaining family are, and that’s the whole problem.”

“Why?” Ruiz now knew exactly how Manrico must have felt every day of his life. He always looked painfully confused by just about any conversation, and if he were on the receiving end of this one Ruiz had no doubt that he, too, would be at least a little baffled. “Why don’t your family know who you are?” Ruiz was sure that there was something that he was missing here, but he couldn’t work out what it was, and neither Manrico nor Azucena was giving any hints right now.

“The problem is that what remains of my family hates me.”

There was only one person who Ruiz could think of that outright hated Manrico, and that was the Count.

“How did—?” Ruiz cut himself off, staring with confusion between Manrico and Azucena. “I mean… is it really? He’s really, what?”

“Who do you think is what?” Azucena asked, keen to make sure that Ruiz was on the correct page.

“The Count,” Ruiz said. “But he—” Ruiz gestured at Manrico, who did not look like a nobleman by anybody’s standards.

“Do you remember,” Azucena said quietly, “around fifteen years ago, the old Count’s younger child went missing from the castle?”

“But that child died,” Ruiz said, still staring in confusion at Manrico and barely even looking at Azucena. Fortunately, if he had been looking at her, Ruiz would have seen that she really wasn’t concerned about this: she was just happy to be able to tell the story again. “I remember, I heard that the… the body was found.” (It hadn’t really been a body. The child’s half-burned skeleton had been found at the foot of the stake that the old witch was burned at, planted there as though it was a message to anybody who might try to punish other witches. Ruiz had hated to think about it before, and he hated it even more now that he was looking at the person who had burned the baby.) “And that body was real.”

“The reason that you met Manrico when he was two years old and not a newborn was that the body that they found was that of my son.” Ruiz didn’t know how Azucena was so matter of fact about this, because even the thought of it was making him feel queasy. “I stole the child from the castle as revenge for my mother being burned.” This seemed like a disproportionate amount for the poor woman to have been through in her life. If he hadn’t known that she didn’t much like being touched if she wasn’t the one initiating the contact, Ruiz would have wanted to hug Azucena at this moment. “She had gone to read the baby’s fortune, but the Count…”

Ruiz was still confused, but he thought he had heard enough to piece something together. “So, Manrico is the baby that was stolen from the Palace?”

“He is,” Azucena confirmed.

“And the Count is his brother?” Manrico nodded. “And you and your brother both fell in love with the same woman?” That part actually did seem remarkable, considering how little evidence of personality he had seen in Leonora during the time he had spent around her. There must have been something about her other than her looks, but he couldn’t figure out what it was that had made them both want to spend the rest of their lives with her. “And then the Count stole her from you?”

“Well, not really,” Manrico said. “She doesn’t love him.”

“I know she doesn’t love him,” Ruiz said. “I remember how disgusted she was when I lead her to the castle that she was having to stoop to seducing him.”

“Well, it wasn’t just Leonora that he wanted,” Azucena pointed out. “She was probably just the safest option.”

“What, Ines?” Manrico said.

“Try again,” Azucena told him.

“There aren’t any other women close to him other than the queen, and she’s old enough to be his mother.”

“Keep trying,” Azucena said. Whatever she knew, she was clearly keen that he should figure it out for himself rather than allow him to receive any help understanding the mystery. “It isn’t the Queen either.”

“Good.” Manrico kept thinking. “…Not a woman?” For a second, Ruiz was about to tell him to stop being an idiot and make a sensible suggestion, because of course the Count wouldn’t be in love with another man, that was ridiculous, but Azucena nodded. Manrico looked as though he was making a mental inventory of all the men in Aragon for a few seconds, until he suddenly blurted out, “His officer?”

“Really?” Ruiz had noticed the officer, but he just couldn’t see that he was the person that Di Luna might be in love with. In the nunnery, even though the had been in the middle of a battle, he had hardly done anything except try to encourage his master to stop acting like an idiot: in fact, Ruiz thought that he had seemed not just older but fairly sensible. Leonora, on the other hand, was a few years younger than Di Luna, and also just as rash and foolish as he and Manrico both were. (He supposed, now that he thought about it, that Manrico and the Count really were similar.) Then again, he supposed that sometimes people did fall in love with people who were the complete opposite of them.

“How do you know?” Ruiz and Manrico both asked at the same time. The two men were both similarly curious (and, in this case, prying), which it was a relief to know, considering that Manrico was apparently so far above Ruiz in rank (as he had just discovered in the past few minutes).

“Do you remember, before you came looking for me, I was imprisoned by the Count?” Azucena asked, clearly happy to be talking about something other than her traumatic past. “There was some… well, not really throwing each other around, but I think I could intuit what was going to be going where.”

Manrico laughed at that. Ruiz was trying to figure out who would have topped, because on the one hand Ferrando was older, but the Count outranked him - really, there was no clear answer. He also probably ought to stop thinking so much about it, considering that he had never even had a conversation with either of the two men, let alone had an opportunity to try to figure out what either of them liked in bed.

“Well,” Azucena said, “I certainly overheard everything. It sounded as though the Count enjoyed it.” She laughed. “He couldn’t look at me the next day.”

“I’m very glad to know that the Count likes cock,” Ruiz said, “It’s something I’ve spent all my life up until this point wondering about, so it’s wonderful to have my mind put at ease.” Manrico laughed at the joke, but Ruiz still had more to say. “That being said, I’m not actually sure why you’re telling me all of this, since I’m not actually part of your family.”

“Well, you are now, you know enough about my brother’s sex life,” Manrico laughed, and then looked slightly taken aback by the fact that yes, the Count was his brother, as though he had somehow spoken the fact into existence. “No, but that isn’t exactly it,” he said. “Leonora does not love the Count, but she does love me, and my mother has told me that the Count has been looking for his… well, he probably thinks he’s looking for his sister, but he has been looking for his brother, actually, for the past sixteen years.”

“So, you think there’s an exchange to be made there?” Ruiz said.

“That’s certainly one way of putting it,” Manrico said. “And I know you’re a nice, non-threatening looking person; you managed to get Leonora into the palace.”

“Women generally don’t carry massive swords.”

“Women also aren’t usually taller than men, Ruiz,” Manrico said, “but she towers over him. He’s tiny, so that’s hardly relevant.”

Ruiz supposed so - but he also wasn’t sure that he wanted to get into this. It sounded like a great way of putting himself and his friend (and his friend’s mother) in danger, with very little return. There was no guarantee that the Count would believe him, and even if he did there was then no guarantee that he wouldn’t still refuse to cede where Leonora was concerned. Although, if he really was in love with his army officer as Azucena thought he was and it hadn’t just been an adrenaline-fueled one-off because there weren’t any suitable women around, he supposed that there was a chance.

“I hope your expectations aren’t too high, though,” Ruiz said. “I don’t know how much I can do to help.”

“You can still try, though?” Manrico asked hopefully. “I don’t know that Leonora wants to be out of there but I hope that she does.”

In truth, Ruiz also felt a tiny amount of sympathy for the Count. He hadn’t really known his family that well - he had run away as a child, but that had been his own decision, and he hadn’t seen them for at least a few years - but at least he still had the option of talking to his family again. He just didn’t want to. The idea of being forcibly separated from his family, without the option of contact with them because he believed them to be dead, was difficult for him to think too hard about.

Yes, what was happening to Manrico, being separated from Leonora for so long because another person had married her, was frustrating, but it felt to Ruiz that maybe there were more significant issues there. (He also couldn’t imagine being the one to find the corpse of a baby, or trying to engineer a situation so that some specific person he didn’t like deliberately found the corpse of a baby, but he tried not to over-think that, or even think about it at all past acknowledging how unpleasant the concept was.) Leonora didn’t love the Count, and Ruiz couldn’t really relate to Manrico’s uniquely heterosexual frustrations given that he had never considered or even wanted to be with a woman in his life. However, he did have a family, and also a healthy fear of the concept of death.

“Of course,” he said, after pausing to think it over properly for a few seconds, even though the whole idea made him feel more than just a little bit uncomfortable. “Tell me what you want me to do, or how you want me to help, and I will do my best to.” He couldn’t promise anything, of course, but he knew that Manrico would understand that fact. The fact that he was committing to anything so quickly was remarkable for Ruiz; he liked to think everything he considered doing over for several days at the least. Jumping in as soon as this was requested was remarkable for him.

“I think,” Manrico said, even though Ruiz very much doubted that he had ever had a thought in his life, “that the Count would not recognise you as somebody associated with me, and even if he did I hope he could be convinced that you just wanted to flee your old associations.” It had certainly happened before, although the fact that Ruiz and Manrico were such close friends would make the idea of him suddenly changing sides a little less likely. Ruiz was fairly sure that he could float it, though.

“So, you want me to… what, get into the Palace and then…?” Ruiz wasn’t sure if Manrico had even noticed how vague he had been about it or if the next phase of his plan was coming, but Manrico nearly always needed extra prodding when he thought he had ideas. “Or have you not thought that far ahead?”

“If he seems to be willing to trust you, then request an audience with him, and we can deal with the rest of it.” Manrico indicated himself and Azucena, just to make it clear that no, Ruiz wasn’t expected to join in with all of whatever this scheme to get Leonora back was. That said, he wasn’t entirely confident that whatever idea Manrico thought he had would go over well, especially if he was just planning to throw himself on the mercy of the Count. “My mother and I will be close behind,” he said, “and we’ll talk to the Count about what we’ve just told you.”

“And if not?” Ruiz asked. He could tell from Manrico’s expression that, while he had thought a little way ahead, he hadn’t thought that far ahead. Ruiz made a face, but didn’t say anything rude to his friend. It had to be a big upheaval to find out that he was, in fact, the missing son of the dead Count, and the brother of the current Count. Ruiz couldn’t exactly blame him for seeming like he was all over the place at the moment, however frustrating his lack of planning was. In any case, it was hardly a new development; Manrico had never been good at planning military engagements, hence why he had been captured so easily, so he couldn’t imagine that this was something that he would have been good at. Planning was why he kept Ruiz around.

“He hasn’t thought about that,” Azucena said bluntly. Manrico looked like he was going to object, but either Azucena’s expression or the fact that she clearly wasn’t lying and he hadn’t thought further than the Count immediately wanting to listen to what Ruiz told him stopped him.

“We’ll figure something out,” Ruiz said quickly. “If the Count doesn’t accept that you’re his brother…” Which Ruiz couldn’t really see why he would do, if he was being honest. He believed Azucena, because how could she possibly conceive of a story this dark and of this magnitude, let alone think to lie about it. Combined with the fact that she looked so little like Manrico, Ruiz was very happy to believe what she was saying, not least because it meant that he could think about it as little as possible. “If he won’t believe it I think that officer you mentioned might,” he said.

Azucena didn’t look sure about that, but Manrico looked as though he was winding up to talk her around to it. Ruiz was usually happy to trust his friend’s judgment, especially when it was in relation to things that Manrico hadn’t suggested for himself, but this was different and the stakes were clearly far higher. He also didn’t want to further upset Azucena, who clearly hadn’t enjoyed having her past dredged up, and who probably wouldn’t appreciate a repeat performance of it. “I would rather that neither of you get killed by the Count,” Ruiz explained, “and I think that this might actually be the best way to do that, rather than…” He made a gesture.

“Of course,” Manrico said. “I would rather if nothing had to change but I would also like not to be in danger - and for my mother not to be in danger.” At least he hadn’t suddenly decided that Azucena was no longer his mother - not that Manrico would ever do that, Ruiz imagined. His two primary traits were that he was extremely stupid, but also particularly nice.


	4. CHAPTER THREE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> perhaps i will be able to write more of this if i post the backlog of chapters that i haven't posted yet... anyway, there's a lot of Conjecture here because i'm writing this shit for nanowrimo.

Ferrando was, by this point, thoroughly tired of having to be the bigger person in this ridiculous situation. But if not him, then who? Di Luna apparently wasn’t physically capable of being emotionally mature - he had thought that maybe, now that he had what he wanted (or what he apparently thought he wanted. He had been trying to avoid thinking too hard about Di Luna and Leonora’s relationship because at the moment he wasn’t sure that he wanted anything to do with Di Luna just generally, but even he could tell that Di Luna wasn’t entirely sure about his new relationship), Di Luna might have mellowed out a little.

Of course, he hadn’t. And, once again of course, Ferrando was the person who was having to deal with that.

Usually, he could deal perfectly well with Di Luna. Even though Di Luna was a strange, erratic person and Ferrando seemed a lot calmer to an outside observer, they were both still on more or less the same level most of the time. What Di Luna lacked in common sense, Ferrando was able to make up for, and, while Ferrando didn’t lack imagination (the nightmares had to come from somewhere, and he didn’t like the idea that it was coming from the ghost of the witch who had been burned), Di Luna made up for his deficit in emotional intelligence and enthusiasm for most things that weren’t Di Luna specifically.

Di Luna was a talented problem causer. Fortunately for him, Ferrando was usually equally as talented at solving the problems that his master gave rise to. He had had plenty of practice with Di Luna’s father, after all, who was, if anything, wilder than his son: he supposed that Di Luna’s mother’s influence had diluted his father’s tendencies a little. Clearly his mother’s influence hadn’t diluted his father’s traits enough, though, since Di Luna had decided to run away with a woman who wasn’t interested in him. It could probably have been worse - but Ferrando didn’t know how.

In reality, he was still quartered in the soldiers’ barracks, but his room had been empty for some time. He was - or had been - in the palace with Di Luna enough that there was really very little need for him to still have a room in the barracks - Di Luna had actually spent some time trying to persuade him that he could just move his things out and allow one of the other officers to take his newly-vacated room, and Di Luna was clingy enough that Ferrando had almost considered it. It had been Ferrando’s idea that he not do so, just so that he would have some space on his own if anything went wrong. Di Luna had appeared a little confused, but at least he hadn’t been offended by the idea of Ferrando not wanting to move in, as it were, just then. Ferrando was now very glad that he hadn’t just jumped into it with Di Luna like he had with his father.

Di Luna’s father had been younger when they had met than Di Luna was now but somehow, even though the two men had met when Ferrando had saved the old Count from being killed by an enemy soldier, he had been far more sensible about relationships than Ferrando and Di Luna had been. Yes, Ferrando and Count Martin had been attracted to each other almost immediately, and by the time they returned home they had been fairly well established as a couple, but the Count and Ferrando had both respected the other’s need for space, and hadn’t tried to rearrange things past what either was comfortable with.

It was certainly relevant that the son and not the father had been the one to raise Ferrando from a menial to a Ministeralis. Ferrando and Count Martin had been completely happy having a relationship where there was a considerable difference in rank, while Di Luna had made it his first action to bring Ferrando’s rank further in line with his own (because Ferrando couldn’t be made an actual noble) when he was an adult. Ostensibly it had been to thank him for spending so much time taking care of Di Luna when he had been young, but Ferrando had an unpleasant suspicion that the real reason had been that he was for some reason uncomfortable being so close to somebody he outranked by so far. (Ferrando supposed that he couldn’t entirely blame Di Luna for this - even though both his parents had been close to people of lower rank, it was strongly ingrained in the nobility that they weren’t to fraternise too much with the lower orders. Di Luna had a lifetime of mental programming to overcome that Ferrando really didn’t on that subject, so if it made him more comfortable, Ferrando wasn’t going to begrudge him it.)

The fact that Ferrando was actively in love with Di Luna was a huge impediment here.

He had been hiding in the barracks for the past few days because he wanted to avoid the possibility of seeing the Count. Di Luna had been spending nearly all of his time with his new wife, which was the one thing that Ferrando was glad she was doing. Di Luna was thoroughly distracted by his new relationship, even though he seemed to have completely forgotten that Ferrando even existed, which he despised, so he was apparently happy to ignore Ferrando, which meant that Ferrando was able to slide into the background and disappear away from his old friendship with the Count.

The soldiers had a small common room near to the armory - it had been Ferrando’s idea to extend the barracks slightly so that the men had somewhere to sit - that Ferrando had been spending most of his time in when he was awake. He was in this common room just before the sun went down, waiting for it to become an acceptable time for him to go to bed. He was glad of only one thing about the fact that he and Di Luna seemed to have “broken up”, if there was even something for them to “break up”, and that was the fact that Ferrando was now allowed to have a normal sleep schedule. Di Luna seemed to operate in a different direction to Ferrando, or to anybody else, and one facet of that was the fact that he slept during the day and was awake at night.

Ferrando had shared Di Luna’s bed for long enough that he had started to have the same sleep pattern just out of convenience, because coming to bed just as Di Luna was getting up, or getting up just as Di Luna was going to bed, just annoyed both of them. It wasn’t entirely natural for Ferrando to be up all night, but he had done years of night-time patrols around the edges of the palace, and Di Luna couldn’t cope with being up during the day, so it was easier for him to slightly inconvenience himself than for Di Luna to be unable to function and fall asleep constantly during the day.

It was nearly June, and the sun was setting painfully late in the day, and Ferrando found himself getting more and more irritable the later in the year it got. He didn’t mind going to sleep early so that he could wake up before sunrise in the winter, but by the time it was summer he found himself getting irritable by the time the sun set, and resenting how early the sun rose. He couldn’t sleep well when it was light - this had meant sleeping when he and Di Luna had been close enough to share a bed very frustrating - so he only got a few hours of sleep. By the middle of summer he wouldn’t be able to sleep until about ten, and would then wake up at four in the morning. Theoretically this was a decent amount of sleep, but he found the fact that he was getting up so early in the morning and then going to bed again so early put off his circadian rhythms to a miserable extent.

A small group of the soldiers were sat in the corner drinking. Ferrando was trying not to pay attention to them - he didn’t like to eavesdrop on them because they were incredibly boring - but he still couldn’t help but overhear that they were discussing who was going to go out on patrol at night. Ferrando had instilled a fear of falling asleep on duty in the soldiers with his stories, but at the same time it seemed as though this had backfired a little and now they were unwilling to go out alone at night, and the night-time patrols didn’t require more than one person.

“…All I’m saying is that if there is a ghost out there, I don’t want to see her,” one of the soldiers said, before swigging from his drink and slamming the cup down on the table. “You’ve heard those stories, she sounds…” He trailed off. “Anyway, I don’t want to find out if she’s as bad as she sounds.”

“Do you really believe that?” Another of the soldiers had clearly seen through Ferrando’s story. “Ferrando was clearly just trying to scare us because he didn’t want us falling asleep on duty.”

“But… the servant who died?” That was one of the younger recruits. He didn’t look much older than about seventeen - probably too young to be serving in the army, but Ferrando wasn’t going to complain. He had been young when he had joined the army, and the army aspect hadn’t done him any harm. (He couldn’t give a positive comment on what had happened over the rest of his life. That had been awful for the most part.) “I know he was real.”

“Do you really believe that he died because he got cursed by a ghost?” The second soldier laughed. “Those owls get fucking massive, and they aren’t friendly,” he explained. “He probably just scared it and it attacked him. It’s nothing to do with ‘ghosts’.”

“And he died?” the recruit retorted. Ferrando wasn’t sure if he was really scared of the “ghosts” or if it was just him trying to get out of work, but he still wanted to hear how the other soldier would rebut this. The servant unequivocally had died.

“He got scared and fell in the moat.” The soldier shrugged. “Didn’t Ferrando mention that?” He raised his voice a little now, knowing that Ferrando was over there and assuming that he was listening in on their conversation, and hoping that he would want to come over and join in their conversation, even though that had literally never happened before.

Even so, Ferrando sighed, guessing that he wouldn’t be allowed to have a quiet evening after which he went to bed fairly early, and got up to go over to them rather than ignoring them as he wanted to do. “What did I mention?” he asked, trying not to sound too frustrated by having been summoned from what he had been thinking about.

“That servant who got ‘scared to death’ by the witch,” he said. “Or the owl, or whatever it was.” A true stickler for accuracy this one. “Tell him he just got scared and fell off the battlements and drowned, not that he actually got cursed to death, so I can go to bed.” He gestured to the young recruit, who was trying not to look at Ferrando. Ferrando wasn’t sure he minded.

“He making you convince him to do his job?” Ferrando laughed. The soldier nodded without saying anything, as though he was too afraid to disagree. “Well, he certainly fell in the moat. I remember I had to make one of the other servants go into the moat to fish him out.” Ferrando shrugged. “But the owls aren’t that mean. They’ll leave you alone if you don’t trouble them, and they’re used to having people going back and forth.”

“Why?”

“They’re nesting in the walls of a castle; people go past them all the time so they’re used to it by now.” Clearly this child was particularly dim-witted, if he had needed to have that explained to him. Ferrando almost found it endearing, or he supposed that he would have if everything didn’t annoy him at the moment. “I don’t know why they would be so aggressive, if nothing was controlling them, if they usually won’t even bother us.”

“Maybe they had chicks that they were defending,” the soldier who had been trying to convince the young recruit that Ferrando was lying said hastily. “Even sheep and cows will get aggressive if they think something might be trying to attack their young. Owls have talons, so they could do even more damage.”

“Maybe,” Ferrando conceded. He certainly wasn’t going to stick his hands into the owls’ nest to find out. “But why did you want to know about all this? You’re not trying to get out of work, are you?” He tried to make it sound like a joke, but he was clearly in a bad enough mood that it came across, and the young recruit shrunk away a bit when he asked the question.

“Well…” The soldier who he had heard speaking first didn’t sound as though he wanted to argue with Ferrando, but he supposed that he had to try it.

“Well, he’s far too young to be sending him off into the forest on his own,” he said, pointing at the recruit. This wasn’t actually true, and had he been in a slightly better mood maybe Ferrando would have just ordered the boy out and decided that he could put up with the whining after he did so, but as it stood he was in too vile a mood to want to tolerate annoying the boy. There was truly nothing more dangerous than an animal out there, and Ferrando knew that they would usually flee when they heard somebody approaching. “And I don’t think either of you will be going instead of him either.”

The two soldiers looked at each other as though questioning their own realities and conferring with one another to make sure that what they were experiencing was real. The recruit, on the other hand, shrunk down in his seat, as though expecting to be berated or screamed at. Ferrando almost wondered who his commanding officer was, because terrifying the men did nothing to endear officers to them, which was a danger in a war situation, but then realised that he didn’t care. He probably wouldn’t stay in the palace for much longer: this whole situation was just wearing him down in a way that he really couldn’t cope with, or at least not for much longer.

“I don’t think any of you will be going, in fact,” he said, “so I may as well do it myself.”

“But—” The first of the two soldiers looked more than a little afraid, which was exactly what Ferrando wanted.

“You’ll figure out how to make it up to me, I’m sure.” Ferrando headed into the armory to collect his sword, and, when he was prepared, headed out of the doors to go and begin patrolling.

This usually wasn’t Ferrando’s responsibility. Generally, it was given to new recruits to give them an idea of the land so that they would know exactly where everything was, and to make sure that they knew just how close they were to other regiments who might not be receptive to trespassers. It also allowed the officers to get rid of recruits for a few hours, which Ferrando was glad of, especially when there were a lot of recruits. He couldn’t begrudge them it because they were all children, really, but he did find it frustrating. There was a reason that Ferrando was not a nanny.

Ferrando was always glad of how quiet the woods surrounding the palace were.

It was really the only place he could get any peace any more, and in summer it was cooler than the rest of the grounds thanks to being mostly under a canopy of trees, while in winter it was protected from the worst of the snow and winds and vile weather. Really, Ferrando understood where hermits who lived in the woods were coming from: it certainly seemed as though they had everything right, from his admittedly untrained point of view.

He had done plenty of exploring of the woodland during the day, so he was really uniquely qualified to patrol at night. He knew where branches hung low and needed to be sheltered from the fire of his torch, and where the ground was twisted up with roots and he needed to tread carefully. He also knew where the ground was churned up and so muddy that it could suck his boots off if he didn’t tread carefully or hop across the stumps of felled trees, but that was a redundant point because that was virtually all of the forest. It was down the hill from the castle, so water ran off into the woodland, leaving it a bog in winter, and impassable in some places. Even in summer or late spring as it was now, some areas required caution to avoid getting coated with mud.

Ferrando knew where these areas were from experience, having fallen over more than his share of times, usually extinguishing his torch in the process and having to feel his way back through the woods to the castle. Even though the ground was soft in most places he always managed to fall onto something sharp and injure himself somehow. Even if he hadn’t believed in ghosts, because he did, even if he didn’t believe in them in the way that his fellow soldiers did, he would have thought that there was something influencing him to get injured so often when he wandered around in the woods.

The wandering around in the woods at night was probably the problem aspect, but Ferrando wasn’t going to give that up any time soon. In truth, he would have taken this patrol even if the recruit who was meant to hadn’t been afraid to, because it was one of the very few tasks he truly enjoyed. Di Luna had sometimes accompanied him, although not often enough that he stopped being jumpy and grab at Ferrando’s sleeve at every noise, or need guiding around particularly difficult rock formations, not that Ferrando particularly minded this. It wasn’t so much the fact that Di Luna was vulnerable in those situations that he liked - God knew that he certainly hadn’t been the day they had captured Manrico’s mother - but the fact that he was willing to actually defer to Ferrando’s knowledge of something for once.

Di Luna was not particularly intelligent, not by any metric. Unfortunately, Ferrando was far too nice to the Count, and allowed him to think that he was. Usually, this didn’t have bad results, but when it came to things like this it was probably going to kill or seriously injure Di Luna one day. He had already been injured twice - once in his duel with Manrico, and then again at the nunnery, although at the nunnery it had been down to his own stupidity and refusal to admit to not being the wanted party out of him and Manrico - so it was perfectly reasonable to Ferrando’s mind that it would take several more attempts from the world to teach him for the lesson to finally be learned.

This far out into the depths of the forest, there was no sign of light from the palace, and Ferrando could just barely see the moon and a sparse few stars through the trees. He knew that it wouldn’t be safe to stop for too long - he knew that there were wolves in this area and that they would only be afraid of the light from his torch for so long - but it wouldn’t hurt to stop for a while, if only just to clear his head for a minute. He paused when he came to an intersection between four of the paths cut into the forest floor. It wasn’t too muddy here, so it was probably a good place to rest for a while, but for some reason Ferrando just couldn’t make himself switch off.

This was unusual for him.

Usually, the reason that Di Luna kept Ferrando around was that Ferrando was comparatively more relaxed that Di Luna. He certainly wasn’t calm, because he couldn’t have been calm to be in that sort of work, especially not for somebody who was as highly strung as Di Luna, but he was less outwardly aggressive and certainly a lot less excitable unless he was specifically pushed. In fact, the angriest he had been in recent years was when he had realised just who the woman they had taken prisoner at the camp was, but he was trying not to think about that.

He managed to complete his rounds of the forest much quicker than the boy who had been assigned the duty probably would have, but he still didn’t want to return to the palace, and especially to the barracks. He found the other soldiers frustrating to be around at the best of times, which this was not, and sometimes he did just need to be alone for a while, just so that he didn’t go completely mad. He had a lot of responsibility, especially since Di Luna preferred to be in the thick of battle when it happened, rather than observing from afar as he probably should have been at his rank, so Ferrando often found himself doing work which should have been done by Di Luna.

The other soldiers likewise didn’t help Ferrando with his work. They were mostly younger than him, and at least fifty percent of the men were literally young enough to be his sons, if Ferrando had any interest in ever having children, and they were mostly extremely boisterous. One or two of the older ones, mostly those around his age, although they were few and far between these days, knew that he wasn’t interested in women at all, but the younger ones would try to drag Ferrando into their conversations about the women in the local towns and villages. In the past, Ferrando might have played along just to be polite and because he wasn’t sure what would happen if the other soldiers found out that he was only attracted to men, but these days he didn’t have the patience for it, and he would just ignore them or walk away from the conversations.

The fact that Ferrando spent so much time doing this particular duty meant that he knew exactly where the best places in the forest to go to rest for a while were. He was on the right path for one of them, just a couple of minutes east of it, which only he and Di Luna were aware of the existence of. He had found it just through exploring the woods, but he knew how Di Luna could get and how needy he could be, so he had decided that it was best that he share the location rather than let Di Luna think he was doing anything elicit and get jealous of him. Di Luna had promised that he wouldn’t share what he knew, and Ferrando liked Di Luna enough to let him in on this.

Were he sharing his secrets with anybody other than Di Luna it would have annoyed him. As it was, Ferrando had been infatuated at that point, and had managed to read romantic undertones into the action. As it had turned out at the time, Di Luna had just been interested on a vague, academic level and hadn’t had any ulterior motives. As much as Ferrando had wanted to change things at the time, he had constantly taken the lead from Di Luna, and so nothing had happened, as much as it had pained and frustrated Ferrando.

* * *

Di Luna had had no intention of going outside and doing anything for quite a while after Leonora had essentially forced him to confess his feelings for Ferrando. He supposed that yes, he had known that he was in love with Ferrando, or he wouldn’t have slept with him after they had captured Manrico’s mother, because that wasn’t something that he particularly wanted to do with just anybody. But it had been difficult for him to admit it to himself, because it had taken him so long to come to terms with not being a woman, and, even though he knew how soldiers were stereotyped, some small part of his mind still felt conflicted about the fact that he was attracted to men as well as to women.

He had known that being female, and being called M—, and eventually going off to marry some far-off nobleman and carry his children (God knew what would have happened to his father’s land, since his mother had died after V— had been born. It would probably have been absorbed into Di Luna’s hypothetical husband’s land and tithings), was not right for him for a long time. He was certainly fully aware that he was not and never would be female long before he finally broke and demanded to be called Fadrique from that second forward when he was fifteen, for one thing. Ferrando had been supportive then, too: in fact, it hadn’t been entirely that he had decided that he needed to be called Fadrique specifically.

The name hadn’t been Ferrando’s suggestion, because the only thing that he had ever named had been some hunting dogs. But Ferrando had sat there and listened while Di Luna tried to decide on what he should be called from then on. He had been very protective of Di Luna in the next few weeks too, not-so-gently reminding other soldiers, and even noblemen, who called him by the wrong name and pronouns, that his master’s name was Fadrique now, and that they had better call him that if they wanted to see tomorrow morning.

Di Luna had been a fool not to see at the time just how good of a friend Ferrando was to him. He hadn’t felt anything for Ferrando at that point, that hadn’t really happened until Di Luna was well into his twenties, and he didn’t even know when Ferrando had developed his attraction to Di Luna because he hadn’t thought to ask at the time. Now, though, he was regretting not acting on it, because clearly it was possible for men to be attracted to other men. Ferrando had been quick to reassure him that no, he didn’t see him as a woman; he didn’t have any interest in women, and that this wasn’t him “making an exception”.

The fact that Ferrando now didn’t seem to want anything to do with him upset him, yes, but it didn’t worry him in the same way as somebody else who had known him as a child and knew that he had transitioned falling out with him might have done. Ferrando might not have been noble by birth, but he had proved himself to be a damn sight more noble in action than many of the “genuine” Aragonese noblemen. Di Luna hadn’t known how to say that when he had raised Ferrando’s rank from menial to Ministeralis, but he hoped that his point had got across without him bungling his attempt to explain how he felt about Ferrando. He didn’t know how to phrase it, for one thing, and he hadn’t wanted to accidentally cause offense with his words.

He hoped that his actions had managed to speak for themselves, because it wasn’t really something that he had been taught by any of his tutors.

He wasn’t sure if it was that Leonora wanted to get rid of him all of a sudden or if she knew something that he didn’t (he knew that there were many things that Leonora knew that he didn’t, of course, but maybe there was something specific, rather than a vague “most things”, that Leonora knew), but practically as soon as the sun had begun to set and she knew that he would be starting to wake up properly she had come into his room, looking far more excited than she had any right to. She never really touched him, even now that they had established that no, she didn’t hate him, and that he was really in love with Ferrando and not with her, but that was just how she was.

“I think you should talk to Ferrando tonight,” she said, as soon as she had sat down on his bed beside him.

He missed Ferrando being there instead of her; that was why he had been wearing Ferrando’s old shirts that he thought he had lost rather than his own for the last few days. He had been sharing the bed with Ferrando for a few years: the earliest he could remember was when he was about twenty four, and he had decided that he needed extra warmth. Ferrando had been convenient, and willing, and he was warm, and then he hadn’t left for nearly the next three years, not that Di Luna objected.

“Why tonight?” Di Luna asked. “We didn’t even talk about it until a week ago.”

“And you’ve already slept with him once,” Leonora said. “And I’m sure you want to do it again. And you clearly don’t enjoy it with me.”

“And you don’t enjoy it with me either.” Di Luna had to concede that one, even though he didn’t really like to admit it. (In fact, he hated it. He wasn’t in love with Leonora, he had realised, but he desperately wanted to be - well - wanted by as many other people as possible. Ferrando clearly didn’t like him right now, and if Leonora also didn’t want him then that left him with nobody, functionally.) “But there’s no… I don’t know if he’ll still be interested.” That particular boat could well have sailed by now. Di Luna didn’t want to confess his feelings for Ferrando only to be told that he had found some other man who was better suited and less stupid and erratic.

“And you won’t find out if you keep sitting here pining over him.” Leonora gave him a gentle prod in the ribs. He grumbled and pulled away from the contact. “When does he usually go to bed?”

“Why would I—?” Di Luna paused, and then realised what Leonora was getting at. “I am not doing that in the barracks.”

“Why not?” Leonora asked. Di Luna growled. “That wasn’t what I meant, anyway,” she said. “I meant that you should go and talk to him now, while he’s still awake, rather than wait until he’s gone to bed and then have to put it off until tomorrow.”

“…Why?”

“Because you’ll find another excuse tomorrow,” Leonora said, as though it was a question with the most obvious answer in the world. “And then again tomorrow, and the day after that, and…” She waved her hand. “Well. You understand my point.”

Di Luna did, as much as he hated to admit it. He had been putting off his attempts to get back into Ferrando’s good books for a month, and really he had been putting off trying to talk to Ferrando about the nature of his feelings for years. He didn’t like to think of it in that way, of course, but it was the truth. If he had been attracted to Ferrando for the past three years, which he supposed he had, even if he hadn’t really admitted it to himself until Leonora had demanded that he do so, then it really was just three years of dead time during which he could have been—

Well, it was probably obvious what he and Ferrando could have been doing for the past three years.

“Why today of all days, though?” He didn’t know why he was still trying to argue, considering that he was arguing against something that he desperately wanted to do, but it seemed like the right thing to do for some reason, even though it was completely contrary to what he probably should have been doing at this point. “Do you know something I don’t?”

“I know a lot of things you don’t,” Leonora said, partly to make Di Luna laugh but partly because it was true. “But I don’t know anything specific about Ferrando, I just don’t want him to hate me for ‘stealing’ you.” She rolled her eyes. Di Luna laughed, but at the same time he understood what she meant. Usually, Ferrando was one of the nicest people imaginable even if he could be a little prickly, but if things were going badly for him like they were now, he could be particularly vile. “And he’s clearly far better suited to you than I am.” Since Leonora was still in love with Manrico, even if he was furious at her as she imagined he must have been for marrying Di Luna to save him, anything would probably have been better suited to Di Luna than she was.

“I don’t think even he could think you ‘stole’ me,” Di Luna said. “It wasn’t as though you had much choice in marrying me; even I know it wasn’t your intention to marry me because you love me.” He put his head slightly to the side and looked out of the window at what remained of the sunset. “But I think you’ll carry on insisting if I don’t go, and I don’t want us to keep going around in circles when I could be doing literally anything else.”

At this point, he would have preferred to get into a violent argument with Ferrando or have major surgery again to carrying on this debate with Leonora. He hoped, though, that the result of his conversation with Ferrando wouldn’t be that Ferrando would be angry with him but that they could actually have a conversation. “I think he’ll still be in the barracks,” Di Luna said finally, after staring out of the window for a few more seconds. “I’ll go and find him and talk to him now.”

“At last.” Leonora flopped down on her back on Di Luna’s bed, as though she was the one who would be having an awkward conversation with Ferrando, who probably wouldn’t even care about her if all of this was settled. She sat up suddenly. “Except, I probably shouldn’t stay here, and I don’t think I want…” She laughed and got up off the bed.  
“I’ll hardly be able to just… summon him,” Di Luna pointed out. “It’s at least five minutes to the barracks, and then I’ll have to talk to him, and then…”

Leonora was giving him a look that suggested that she really didn’t care about what he was saying, and in truth he was just rambling to keep on putting off going and talking to Ferrando. This was entirely true, and by this point even Di Luna was starting to get tired of himself. It was probably only a matter of time before Leonora dragged him out there herself just to shut him up and have some time to herself, without her husband. Rather than allowing her to do this, because he really wanted to talk to Ferrando at his own speed, he quickly disappeared out of the door.

The barracks genuinely were about five minutes away from the palace, but by the time Di Luna finished talking to Leonora and managed to get himself together enough to leave it was already completely dark. If Ferrando wasn’t out somewhere in the castle grounds or some outlying territory he would almost certainly be in bed, but, at the same time, there was plenty of scope for something good to do if that was the case.

Fortunately the soldiers were all strange men, even though Di Luna didn’t really want much to do with them unless they were Ferrando. Rather than being confused, or awed, or even frustrated by the presence of their commanding officer in their barracks, the few men who were there drinking and playing cards and talking didn’t pay Di Luna too much mind, other than to vaguely say “hello” to him. It was strange, because Di Luna wasn’t here very often - not because he was trying to avoid the men, but just because it was usually Ferrando that he needed to see, and Ferrando was usually with him. This was certainly the longest he had been without Ferrando since his father had died - possibly the longest since they had met, not that he was entirely sure about that.

“Are you looking for somebody, sir?” Di Luna spun around as somebody addressed him, only to find that he was looking at a very young-looking man.

He was probably a new recruit, based on the uniform he was wearing - or rather, the attempt at a uniform. He was so small that most of the standard-sized uniforms wouldn’t have fitted him, which was a problem that Di Luna knew, but he was both taller and slightly broader across than this young man. The recruit’s sleeves were rolled up off his hands, and his sword hung practically to the floor. If he couldn’t sympathise, especially with the issue of clothing with overly long sleeves, Di Luna would probably have laughed.

“Yes, actually,” Di Luna said. “Is Ferrando here? Or has he already gone to bed?” He knew that if he could Ferrando would sleep for twelve hours a night, while Di Luna needed about six hours during the day. That could become a problem if something did happen between them, but he didn’t want to get ahead of himself: there was every chance that Ferrando would just reject him and send him back to the palace, especially if he was asleep.

“He’s out on patrol, Signore.” One of the other soldiers had come to save the young recruit, who suddenly looked very uncomfortable, from having to carry on a conversation with Di Luna. “He only went out… what, twenty minutes ago,” he added, “so I don’t imagine he’ll be too far ahead.”

“Not for you, maybe,” Di Luna said. This other soldier was taller than Di Luna, who frequently found himself having to run to keep up with Ferrando, especially when Ferrando wasn’t in a good mood. At his natural pace it would probably take Di Luna about fifteen minutes to catch up with Ferrando, but he was also agitated enough that he would probably end up running the whole way. “Did you see which way he went?” Di Luna had a vague idea of where Ferrando would have gone, but he didn’t know for sure.

“Well,” the soldier said, “he took the duty from Cristoval, and…” He looked down at the recruit. “Which way were you meant to be going again?” he asked. Di Luna got the impression that he knew really, but he didn’t want to commit to it.

“Out east along the ridge and then back through the woods, Signore,” Cristoval said nervously.

Well, he probably wouldn’t have gone that way. Ferrando wouldn’t go near the ridge if he could avoid it, and if he was picking up duties from the other men then Di Luna couldn’t imagine that he would be doing them to their fullest extent. Ferrando was already in a bad mood, so it wouldn’t have surprised Di Luna if he had said he would do the whole duty but that he would just disappear for a night to relax even though he was really just planning to sulk.

He made a face, trying to decide which way Ferrando might have gone in the woods. “Thank you, then,” Di Luna said. “I’m sure I’ll find him somewhere.” He actually wasn’t sure that he would be able to find Ferrando, not if he wanted to avoid him. There were many acres of woodland into which he could disappear, and Di Luna certainly didn’t want to be combing all of it for one man who probably didn’t want Di Luna sneaking up on him.

“Should we expect you back before morning, Signore?” The older soldier managed to cut through whatever Di Luna was thinking about. “Or should we lock the doors when you leave?”

“I think…” Di Luna trailed off. “I can’t say,” he admitted, and then realised that really this wasn’t a conversation he wanted to be having with one of the soldiers. “Well, I’ll return to the palace in either situation,” he said magnanimously. “Ferrando might as well accompany me if that happens; I don’t want you men staying up if you have duties to attend to tomorrow.”

The young recruit gave Di Luna a look that suggested he thought there was something going on but that it was going over his head and he didn’t want to know what was happening. The other soldier, on the other hand, looked like he was trying to hold back laughter. Di Luna supposed that there were stereotypes about army men and what they did together (and to each other), but he wasn’t sure that he liked to be the butt of that particular joke.

Di Luna did not like the woods, but he had seen what he was fairly certain Ferrando’s bootprints on the ground leading into the deepest part of the forest. This made sense, but Di Luna was not too keen on it. The forest was certainly not his natural milieu, but he knew that it was Ferrando’s, and if he couldn’t meet with him on neutral ground then it was probably best for this to take place somewhere that Ferrando liked. The issue had seemed to be that he felt that Di Luna thought only of himself, and while what he was doing now could also be misinterpreted - and Ferrando probably would - he hoped that Ferrando would look less negatively upon it than he would being dragged into the palace to have a conversation, especially if that conversation was one that he didn’t want to have.

Di Luna couldn’t imagine that this was a conversation that Ferrando would be keen to have. Certainly not now, but probably not at any point in time, if he was being honest about his prospects here.

Di Luna had never coped well with the cold - he was small to begin with, and the fact that he was very slight and not perhaps as muscular as he could have been, although he was strong enough to wield a sword, meant that the wind tended to blow right through him. The nights were warmer at this time of year than in winter, but that wasn’t saying much; all it really meant was that it didn’t snow. It was still windy and cold, and on cloudless nights like tonight it seemed almost impossibly cold. He was wearing three layers - one of Ferrando’s shirts, a robe that should have been thick enough to be sloping around in, and a cloak over that - but he was regretting not wearing a doublet under the robes. While he wasn’t miserably cold just yet, he was starting to feel the chill, and he hoped that he would be over it by the time he found Ferrando.

The fact that Ferrando was angry with him hadn’t made him respond similarly. It wasn’t that he had somehow grown past that in the last month, because he hadn’t. He was still petty and immature at times, but that he knew that it wasn’t a good idea, or a productive use of his time, to get angry about something that was really his fault at its core. The fact that he was sloping around the woods, even though it was a little warmer under the canopy of trees, in the cold and the dark with a torch that he was afraid to move too far away from his face for fear of accidentally setting light to the entire forest, on the other hand, wasn’t endearing Ferrando to him.

There would probably not be words said about it, either because Ferrando would be too angry and Di Luna would be too upset about that to focus on what had been upsetting him, or, and this was by far his preferred reason, because Di Luna would suddenly find himself otherwise occupied. That would certainly stop him from thinking about just how cold he was feeling. It had certainly warmed him up last time.

It was probably best not to dwell on that aspect of it while he was trekking through the woods, though. Any animals or bandits could be hiding out here, and while Di Luna wasn’t fragile, or at least wasn’t as fragile as he looked, there was a danger to wandering around at night on his own. He had taken off any valuable jewelry, and the shirt he was wearing was Ferrando’s and therefore not made of too expensive a fabric, but the robe and cloak would both mark him as a nobleman and therefore eminently possible to ransom. He did not want that, and he particularly didn’t want to drag Ferrando into that, not now but also not at any point.

Di Luna was beginning to think that he might have exhausted the possibilities of the woods as a place that Ferrando might be found in when he reached a small clearing in a crossroads that he recognised even in the dark when lit only by his torch. He turned around a few times as though that might remind him of which direction the larger clearing that Ferrando had showed him, he knew more out of obligation than any actual desire to show him it. Di Luna hadn’t even thought about it until precisely this point, but he felt confident that this would be where Ferrando was.

When he thought about it, Di Luna was less confident that Ferrando wanted him to join him there - but he could deal with the fallout of that eventuality when he got there. At the moment, assuming that Ferrando would even be there when he arrived felt presumptuous.

He had finally spotted not Ferrando’s boot-prints because there was no mud in which a person might leave tracks, but a trampled down patch of grass leading off to what Di Luna thought was the east (he didn’t have Ferrando’s natural sense for cardinal directions - it was just one of many of Ferrando’s traits that he felt jealous of). The flattened patch was too large to be an animal, and didn’t look to have been worn down over months. The grass was still just as tall, but bent over in a way that looked as though it would bounce back by morning, or if a stiff breeze blew over it from the right direction.

Di Luna followed the path even though he thought it might not be a good idea. This clearly wasn’t a path cut out by humans hauling logs back; he thought it might have been cut by deer trying to get from the small natural spring that it lead to back to this clearing as quickly as possible while avoiding humans. As such, the trees quickly got tighter and tighter in, and it rapidly became dangerous to continue holing the torch. He extinguished the light, and waited for his eyes to begin to adjust to the sudden and complete darkness before he began feeling his way through the forest.

At least without the slight hiss of the fire near to his face he could just about hear the spring that he was trying to head towards. It sounded as though he was getting closer, and that he was on the right side to not end up falling into the marshy ground behind it, but it also occurred to him that barreling out of the woods towards Ferrando in the dead of the night, considering Ferrando’s personality and history and the fact that he also knew that dangerous animals might come marauding out of the undergrowth at any moment, might not in fact be a good idea.

Still.

He could now see the light of a fire through the thickly-packed trees. He hoped that his silhouette would be obviously his rather than allowing Ferrando to mistake him for somebody else. Being that Ferrando had known him for years he hoped he would be easy to identify even in silhouette. He decided to go as non-confrontationally as he possibly could, and pushed the final branch that was blocking his path out of the way before emerging into the clearing.

Ferrando had set up a small fire near the edge of the clearing - Di Luna could tell that he had done the same as he had just done and extinguished his torch somewhere in the woods because he could see the pieces of flint he had used to start the fire near to the rock Ferrando was sat on - but he didn’t seem to have noticed Di Luna let. Di Luna suddenly realised that actually, this really wasn’t a good idea. He was a kind man for the most part, but Ferrando was, and always was, armed. If he was still in a bad mood, this wasn’t the best start.

Just as Di Luna was beginning to consider just turning around and going back to the palace, and lying to Leonora when she inevitably asked how it went, Ferrando turned from where he had been staring into the fire to look at the source of the noise near to him.

“Fadrique?” He didn’t sound happy to see him, but at the same time he didn’t exactly sound angry about the intrusion into whatever he had been doing. He would more have characterised Ferrando’s tone of voice as being guarded: he looked confused, yes, and maybe a little curious, but Di Luna hadn’t been ordered away just yet, and even if he had been he wouldn’t necessarily have obeyed. “I did show you this place,” he said, as though trying to justify not immediately jumping up and murdering Di Luna.

He moved from the middle to one side of the rock that he was sat on, inclining his head slightly to show that Di Luna could sit down. Di Luna approached cautiously as though Ferrando were a wild animal and not his closest friend, and sat down beside him, wrapping his cloak around himself. Without saying anything or looking directly at Di Luna, Ferrando leaned over, putting his arm across Di Luna’s shoulders and pulling him in against him, his cloak falling across Di Luna’s chest and shoulder.


	5. CHAPTER FOUR

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ready to get cockblocked by fanfiction? sure you are, because you're gonna!

Now that Ferrando appeared to be at least considering forgiving him rather than continuing being furious with him, Di Luna found that he had no idea what to say. That being said, he was happy enough that Ferrando hadn’t started trying to get rid of him as soon as he arrived, which he had been expecting considering the sort of mood Ferrando had been in, and the way that Di Luna had reacted to him. Even though neither of them had said anything yet, so Di Luna didn’t know what the end result might be, he was just glad that it seemed as though he was wanted now.

“You’re wearing my shirt.” It was Ferrando who spoke first, sounding almost amused when he looked down at Di Luna and pointed it out. Di Luna was a little surprised that Ferrando had even been able to tell that he was wearing it, considering that it was dark, and he was wearing two layers over it, and Ferrando’s cloak was also wrapped around him, and Ferrando wasn’t even looking directly down at him.

He pointed it out so quickly that Di Luna had to conclude that he must have noticed that some of his clothing had gone missing, and either not wanted to ask for it back because he felt awkward about it or just not cared enough to argue about his shirts going missing. They were more comfortable than Di Luna’s shirts - Di Luna had tried several times to persuade Ferrando to tell him what he did to them to stop them being rough and scratchy, but Ferrando wouldn’t budge on the subject - and much bigger. Generally, just a good thing for Di Luna to wear when he was either having a bad time, wandering around the woods, or both as was the case right now.

Di Luna still didn’t know what to say to Ferrando. He had had some sort of romantic, idealised image of what was going to happen, with Ferrando just somehow immediately knowing what he wanted to say, and being able to intuit that not only was Di Luna sorry for being as stupid as he had been but that he wasn’t in love with Leonora. Di Luna knew all of this, of course - but he couldn’t figure out how to phrase it to tell Ferrando and try to move past what had happened between them over the past few months.

“Why did you come all the way out here?” Ferrando still wasn’t completely looking at Di Luna, but now he wasn’t quite so much sitting with Di Luna next to him as he was sitting with Di Luna’s entire weight against his chest. “I’m a little surprised you managed to make it out here without breaking your leg,” he admitted, but the way he said it wasn’t impolite. He more sounded concerned, because he knew Di Luna well enough to know that he wasn’t adept at navigating in the woods.

Breaking his leg in the dead of the night would certainly have made matters worse, but also some small part of Di Luna liked the idea of Ferrando looking after him while he was sick or injured. Certainly not badly enough to need serious medical attention, but enough that he would be confined to bed for a few days or weeks, and Ferrando would have to fuss over him. On the one hand, that probably wouldn’t have helped matters now if Ferrando was still annoyed with him. Even if Ferrando wasn’t still angry with him and Di Luna found out that Ferrando reciprocated his feelings being sick or having a broken leg would make certain aspects of a relationship very awkward, but on the other hand the idea of being looked after very much appealed to Di Luna.

“Why do you think I came out here?” Di Luna asked. “I was looking for you,” he added hastily, before Ferrando had the opportunity to take offense to the way Di Luna asked.  
Ferrando made a noise that Di Luna didn’t try to comprehend. “Why?”

“I…” There were a lot of things Di Luna could have said here, but now that he was in a position where he could, he found that the ideas for what he could say just disappeared. This certainly hadn’t happened when it had been Leonora he had been trying to confess to, he had found that easy. He supposed that he must have just found it easier because he wasn’t really in love with her, but that wasn’t much help when he was faced with being completely alone with somebody that he was truly in love with. “I’m… because…” He trailed off and buried his head in Ferrando’s shoulder.

“Do you want to try that again?” Ferrando asked. He gently pulled Di Luna’s face away from his chest to look at him properly. “Or we can just forget that I asked.”

“I don’t know how to explain it,” Di Luna said, even though this was a completely stupid thing for a man who had married ostensibly for love to say to the person he was actually in love with, over a month after he and the person in question had slept together. “Or…” He made a face. “I know how to explain it, I just don’t know how to explain it well, and I don’t want to make anything worse than it is already.”

“About Leonora?” Ferrando suggested.

“No,” Di Luna said, almost immediately. “Or rather - no - but it was her idea, and she made me realise, so…” He frowned. “I suppose?”

“Do you want to tell me, or do I have to keep guessing?” Ferrando didn’t exactly sound impatient yet, but Di Luna could tell that he would lose his attention soon and that Ferrando didn’t have infinite time for him.

“What I want is…” Di Luna made a face, because that was starting a bit too strongly. “I’m not in love with Leonora.”

“And you came all the way out here to tell me that?” At least Ferrando didn’t laugh at him, but he didn’t sound too happy about what Di Luna had just told him.

“No!” Di Luna groaned. “Well, yes, but there’s a reason I came to tell you specifically.” Between them, maybe he and Ferrando would be able to close in on the point, catch it, and actually do something about it. As it was, however, they were circling very slowly around it at a great radius without co-operating, which would have made this whole mission a great deal easier. “But…” Di Luna rested his head on Ferrando’s chest again, hoping that this might at least help him to get the point across.

“But?” Obviously Ferrando either couldn’t figure out what Di Luna was trying to get at, or he just wanted him to state it outright. Either way, it felt like extracting teeth for Di Luna, so he couldn’t imagine how frustrating this experience was for Ferrando.

Somehow he still couldn’t force himself to come out and say what he wanted to. “But now that I’m here, I’m not sure how to explain it.” That sounded slightly better - at least Ferrando might think now that the reason he was being so unwilling to have a coherent conversation was that he was trying to think of the best way to phrase what he was thinking, not just that he was scared.

What he actually wanted was for Ferrando to just grab him and kiss him now, without letting Di Luna keep flapping over the best way to explain that he wanted it, but Ferrando was either too polite or too unwilling to do anything that might inadvertently upset Di Luna. Even Di Luna had to admit that being grabbed and kissed without his permission might have annoyed him if he was trying to think of the best way to confess that that was what he wanted. When he thought further into that, though, he realised how strange that thought itself was, and tried to put it out of his mind. Granted, he hadn’t really had much warning after they had captured Manrico’s mother but, well, those had been special circumstances.

In any case, he wanted that again. Probably not here, because it was cold and outdoors and Di Luna didn’t really want to have to walk back to the palace after they had finished and it was better to do things of that sort in a bed rather than on either the ground or a large boulder. The rock that he and Ferrando were on wasn’t particularly comfortable to sit on, so Di Luna imagined that lying or kneeling on it either wouldn’t be any more comfortable or would be actively painful.

Better not to think about that, though. Quite aside from the fact that it was turning Di Luna on in a way that he didn’t really need at such a fraught time, it just seemed presumptuous when he couldn’t even force the words “I thought I was in love with Leonora, but I was just being stupid and now I’ve realised that I’m actually in love with you” through his mind and out of his mouth. Ferrando was always very gentle with Di Luna, and he was being incredibly patient right now, but that wasn’t all that drew Di Luna to him. Even so, Di Luna wasn’t going to lead with that, because he was pretty sure that coming out with the fact that he wanted Ferrando to fuck him again, preferably as soon as possible, would annoy Ferrando more than it would appeal to him.

There was one positive to this. Di Luna now knew exactly what words he needed to say to Ferrando to explain his feelings, but unfortunately there was still the absolutely gargantuan matter of the fact that knowing the words was only one part of the puzzle. Now he needed to actually say what he was feeling, and that was so difficult now that he and Ferrando were here together that it might as well have been impossible.

“Are you not going to tell me, then?” Ferrando asked. His tone was almost fond, even though Di Luna could tell that he was starting to get frustrated.

“I will, just…” Di Luna gestured.

“Just not right now?” Ferrando asked. Di Luna nodded. “Take your time, then.” Rather than continuing to speak and prod at Di Luna for details, Ferrando leaned his head down to bury his face in Di Luna’s hair.

Di Luna wanted more of this, preferably for the rest of his life, but he knew that if he didn’t speak then it would never happen. Somehow, this proved to be the push that he needed to stop sitting around worrying about what Ferrando would think if he told him. He leaned away from Ferrando even though he was enjoying the opportunity to use him for warmth, and looked at Ferrando properly, putting his hand on the older man’s chest. Even though he looked confused, Ferrando seemed to know better than to try to interrupt whatever thought Di Luna had just had.

“Do you remember,” Di Luna asked tentatively, “when we captured Manrico’s mother.” He paused and frowned. “Sorry - I don’t know why I started with that, I know that’s why we…” He waved the hand that he wasn’t holding onto Ferrando with in the air to suggest the falling out that had happened. “I don’t think I’m in love with Leonora. In fact, I know I’m not in love with Leonora.”

“You’re a noble,” Ferrando said. “Your parents weren’t in love either, that’s hardly something to trek all the way out here to tell me.”

“They married to have children.” When Ferrando seemed to concede that that wasn’t why Di Luna had married Leonora and that he had thought that he was in love with Leonora at the time, Di Luna continued, treading carefully for fear of upsetting himself as well as Ferrando. “I’m not in love with Leonora, even though we’re married, but…”

“But?” Ferrando prompted him, after Di Luna paused for too long for it to be reasonable to continue waiting. “But you feel as though you should be?” he suggested, when Di Luna continued to look like he was searching for the right words to say.

“No, that isn’t it.” It might have been a few days ago, but that ship had long since sailed. “I think… I think the reason that I tried to persuade myself that I was in love with Leonora was that I was trying to convince myself that I really am male, and that I’m supposed to love women.”

“We’ve been over the fact that no earthly temptation could persuade me to sleep with a woman.” That was reassuring on several levels. First, the fact that he and Ferrando had slept together, and Ferrando had instigated it, confirmed that Ferrando didn’t see him as a woman. Second, Ferrando was actually trying to help him process his feelings now, and that was an excellent sign. Granted, it was the wrong feelings that Ferrando was trying to help him process, but it was better than Ferrando just ignoring him like he had been.

“And I’m not…” Di Luna made a face. “I don’t not love women,” he explained. “I think I just tried to deny that I don’t just love women.”

“Ah.” That seemed to make more sense to Ferrando, but Di Luna could tell that he still didn’t know exactly what he was getting at. “Well… yes,” Ferrando said, after a few seconds of thought. “I honestly thought you had reached that realisation before… Well, certainly before we captured the witch.”

“No, no, I had,” Di Luna said, “but I think I had been trying not to realise it.” He looked away from Ferrando for a second, but then looked back. “Does that make sense?”

“Not really,” Ferrando admitted.

Di Luna could see that he would have to say it more definitively. “I’m not in love with Leonora,” he said, “but I do still talk to her, and she made me realise who I am in love with.” Or rather, Leonora had forced him to realise who he was really in love with. Fortunately, he was now in a position where he was able to say it outright. Unfortunately, now that he was here he found that he didn’t know which words to use. “And there was a reason I asked about when we captured Manrico’s mother.”

There was a look of mixed shock and confusion and something else that Di Luna wanted to see fully realised on Ferrando’s face that let Di Luna know that Ferrando was beginning to get the point of what he had spent the past half an hour or so dancing around his attempt to say. “I really don’t know how or why it’s taken me this long to come around to realising this,” Di Luna said, “but the whole time I thought I was in love with Leonora and I was pursuing her, I was actually in love with you.”

It was fortunate for both Di Luna and Ferrando that they were in the dark, and neither could completely see the other’s expression, because Di Luna looked panicked probably past what was appropriate in this situation and Ferrando never looked particularly happy or friendly if he was aggressively turning something over in his mind in order to decide how to respond to it. Regardless of his expression, Di Luna would have liked to just jump on top of Ferrando then and there, but he and Ferrando both needed a little time to process what he had just said, and it would probably have been a little uncomfortable, not to mention cold.

“I had hoped that you might be,” Ferrando said finally, and even though it was a poor excuse for what to say in this situation and didn’t really give him anything to go off of, Di Luna was overjoyed. “I especially started to hope so after we captured the witch.” Ferrando said that in a way that made Di Luna’s stomach practically flip over inside his body. He was definitely glad that Ferrando couldn’t see his expression properly, because he was sure that he had turned embarrassingly red.

“So…?” Di Luna had to force his voice back down into a reasonable octave before he spoke. “I mean— you know what I mean.”

“I know what you mean,” Ferrando confirmed, putting his hands on Di Luna’s waist. He looked at Di Luna for a few seconds, but then looked around. “…But I don’t think we should be having this conversation here,” he added. Di Luna could tell from what little he could see of his expression where Ferrando’s mind was going, which was uncommon, but he liked it too.

“But the palace is all the way back there,” Di Luna almost whined.

“And I am far too old to be doing that in the middle of the woods in the dark,” Ferrando said. Di Luna laughed in a way that he hoped suggested that he agreed. “Does Leonora…?” Ferrando looked in the general direction of the palace. “I know you said, but I don’t want you to just launch into it without her knowing.”

“She practically threw me out into the woods to go and look for you,” Di Luna said. “Don’t worry about her, we’re not… Or rather, well, you aren’t interrupting anything.”  
Ferrando nodded, but Di Luna could tell that his mind wasn’t entirely there after Di Luna having told him that he was in love with him yet. If Di Luna hadn’t been extremely needy, because the one time he and Leonora had slept together had been extremely disappointing and Ferrando was just far better despite his inexperience with bodies like Di Luna’s and he wanted to do that again, then he probably would have found the starstruck look on Ferrando’s face funny. As it was, he was more frustrated than amused, although the frustration was with himself now and not with Ferrando for how little sense he made.

Once again, Di Luna knew what he wanted, but apparently that wasn’t happening either, and he had already used up most of the energy that he had in coming out here to have this conversation. He had expected that when he and Ferrando finally talked about their feelings it might end with him at least kissing Ferrando, even if they didn’t immediately jump into bed together. They had done that before without putting any thought into it beforehand and Di Luna hadn’t been too sure about it, so he was willing to wait for a little while until he and Ferrando were better placed mentally to do that again. It had been good, and Di Luna had been thinking about it ever since, but he had been sore for a couple of days after.

Now that Ferrando knew where they stood, Di Luna wouldn’t mind waiting. It wasn’t as though he and Ferrando had to consummate anything immediately, since there was no way they could have children (Di Luna was glad of that: he wouldn’t have objected to having a child, but the idea of the child being biologically his, and him having to carry it, disgusted him, and in any case he didn’t have the organs necessary to carry a child any more. Also, he didn’t think Ferrando would be on board with having children after he had found V—’s body). Besides that, Di Luna was still married to Leonora, and he would probably have to have a conversation with her before he rushed into anything with Ferrando.

Still, something would have been nice. Leonora would probably want to know what had happened, since Di Luna had been gone for about an hour and a half now, and if they stayed here they might well have ended up there all night. It certainly wouldn’t have been a bad idea, considering that the return trek through the woods would probably have been dangerous to make at night. Ferrando was used to camping out in the woods from his military service, although he tended to stay back these days, and Di Luna didn’t mind if Ferrando was there and they had a fire, which he was and they did.

“Ferrando?” Di Luna had almost forgotten that they had been having a conversation, but there was only one way to progress things. Ferrando, on the other hand, seemed to have spaced out entirely: Di Luna couldn’t figure out exactly what his expression meant, but there was something endearing about it.

Di Luna brushed his hand over Ferrando’s cheek to bring him back out of whatever he was thinking about, and pulled him closer to him at the same time. Almost without thinking about it, Di Luna leaned up and kissed him. When he pulled away, Ferrando immediately went to kiss him again. He was still holding onto Di Luna’s waist, and Di Luna stood up on his knees so that he wasn’t having to wrench his head up uncomfortably in order to be level with Ferrando, who was a good amount taller than him. Ferrando could probably have picked Di Luna up if he had felt the need to, or Di Luna supposed that he could if he hadn’t been noticeably shaking, hence Di Luna not pulling him up or onto the ground like he wanted to. (Ferrando would probably have objected to that, or he would have if he was capable of having a coherent thought. Quite aside from the fact that he was incredibly relieved that Ferrando hadn’t sent him away, Di Luna had to admit that he liked the effect that he was having on Ferrando.)

“We should go back to the palace.” Ferrando didn’t sound quite so surprised any more: in fact, even though Di Luna was still a little surprised by what was happening and therefore not entirely with it, even he could tell that Ferrando’s tone of voice meant ‘because I really don’t want to carry on waiting for this’. Considering that Di Luna had been expecting to wait for a little while, this was moving at a far better - or rather quicker - pace than Di Luna could ever have anticipated.

“But…” Di Luna didn’t actually want to object, because actually being in a bed seemed very inviting right now. He had just found that he liked slightly riling Ferrando up, and this was a very easy way to do it. Or at least it was when Ferrando was already very turned on.

“I’ve already said,” Ferrando said, trailing his hand down Di Luna’s thigh in a way that made Di Luna pull in closer to him. “Not while we’re out here.” Di Luna was getting some rather mixed messages from the way Ferrando was now pulling just one finger up the outer side of his thigh was very much contrary to what he was saying, but he got the impression from his tone of voice that that was Ferrando’s intention. In response, because he could play the same game as Ferrando was, and he could probably do it far better than Ferrando considering how he had spent the last month, Di Luna moved one hand from Ferrando’s shoulder which he was using to support himself, and ran his hand slowly down Ferrando’s chest.

Maybe the fact that Ferrando was wearing multiple layers ruined the effect, but Di Luna could still tell that Ferrando got the general idea. It was unfortunate for Di Luna, but probably fortunate for Ferrando, that the fact that there was no natural light, only the fire, meant that Di Luna couldn’t really see what was going on. (This was not entirely a problem: Di Luna preferred the lower lighting, partly because it hid parts of his body that he was uncomfortable with seeing himself, let alone allowing other people to look at, but also partly because it created a better atmosphere. He had thought this when he and Ferrando had been together the first time, and even though he had only been with Leonora once, it had been fairly dark when they had been together.)

Ferrando seemed to understand what Di Luna wanted, but Di Luna was also willing to concede because he didn’t want Ferrando to be uncomfortable. He was just enjoying teasing him, but in the same way, now that Ferrando was reciprocating he suddenly found that he was very keen to go back home to the palace, drag Ferrando into his bed, and then not resurface for a couple of days at the least. Now, he was loosely aware of himself thinking, Ferrando would finally be able to move out of the army barracks and be with Di Luna.

* * *

Ferrando was usually hopeless and discussing his feelings with other people. That was why he was glad that Di Luna had put in most of the work here and had essentially forced a confession out of him, even if that confession hadn’t been verbal. Ferrando was, on the other hand, good at both asserting himself and at getting things done, which was helpful in this situation because Di Luna clearly wasn’t thinking straight. (Not that Ferrando could blame him; he was doing just about everything in his power to distract him from the fact that they needed to leave before Ferrando wanted to do anything.)

Finally, even though he was enjoying what Di Luna was doing, Ferrando pulled Di Luna’s hand away from his chest and then pulled Di Luna up along with him. Di Luna whined again, but this time he seemed more receptive to the fact that Ferrando wanted to get going quickly, rather than for them to continue standing around as they were now. This wasn’t to say that Ferrando wouldn’t have been willing to do something where they were now, but he would probably regret it the next day. He knew from experience that the ground in the middle of the woods was not the most comfortable place to sleep generally, so he couldn’t imagine that it would be much better for doing anything more active.

Di Luna stopped for a few seconds to light the torches that he and Ferrando had extinguished, and then extinguished the fire. It was small enough to be extinguished with a boot, which had been a deliberate choice on Ferrando’s part because he didn’t want to set light to the entire forest, but also partly because there wasn’t enough dry wood to build something that would burn well, and he didn’t want to be coughing all evening from smoke as he would if he burned fresher wood.

The fact that Di Luna hadn’t figured out that there was a more direct path to this clearing from the palace had Ferrando feeling a little smug. Yes, it was more his sort of thing to figure out routes to hard to access places than it was Di Luna’s, but he still liked the fact that he was better at it than Di Luna was. (He was better than Di Luna at a lot of things, but that was a given. Di Luna was one of the least intelligent men Ferrando could imagine.)

“I don’t know why you came here that way,” Ferrando said when Di Luna gave him one of the torches, once his mind had cleared enough for him to be able to form a coherent sentence. He gestured in the direction that Di Luna had come from, only to be met with a confused look from the Count. He wasn’t sure that they both needed torches, considering that they weren’t going to be going in different directions (or he hoped they weren’t - that would certainly be a cruel trick to play on him), but Di Luna wasn’t capable of thinking about things a sensible amount. He either didn’t think about what he was doing at all or he over-thought all of his actions, with no possibility for something between the two where he thought a normal amount.

Ferrando wasn’t much better, of course, as evidenced by his apparent inability to communicate with Di Luna, but he liked to think that he was more sensible than the Count.

“It’s the way from that path in the woods.” Di Luna sounded legitimately confused and not like he was just playing along. “You’re the one who showed me.”

“It’s one way.” Ferrando steered Di Luna out of the way of a shallow trench filled with stagnant water with a hand on his elbow. It was shallow and they weren’t far from the palace so he wouldn’t die of hypothermia in between falling in it and getting back home, but it would probably stink if it was disturbed, if it wasn’t also filled with God-only-knew-what creatures. “It’s certainly the best way if you like hacking your way through trees and brambles, but I’ve done quite enough of that for one lifetime.”

Here, on the other hand, even though they had only been walking for a few minutes, the trees were already beginning to thin out. Even in the poor light and even when he was only looking at him out of the corner of his eye, Ferrando could see that Di Luna was looking at him with a confused but interested expression. The trees finally thinned out to nothing, and the path opened out onto the far edge of the ridge which the palace was perched on top of, which looked down into the valley and the nearby towns and villages.

“How did you even figure this out?” Di Luna asked. It was much colder up here out of the cover of the trees and on top of the ridge, so he leaned into Ferrando, pulling his own cloak further around himself.

“Trial and error,” Ferrando said. “Mostly error. There are a lot of streams to fall into in that forest.”

“And animals,” Di Luna said.

“I usually only wander around there during the day,” Ferrando said. “Which didn’t stop me from getting soaked a few times.”

“And I suppose you remember when they cut down most of these.” Di Luna gestured to the tree stumps that were surrounding them. A little further ahead, there were areas where the stumps had clearly been dug up and the earth turned, but here they hadn’t even bothered with digging them up yet. Di Luna had been about ten when they had started cutting these trees down, but Ferrando had been in his twenties, and probably more able to notice what was going on around him than a child.

“Something like that.” In truth, the reason that Ferrando knew this area so well was that the previous Count had occasionally brought him out here for privacy: that was how he knew that he didn’t want to do anything with Di Luna while they were outdoors in the woods. Of course, he wasn’t going to mention that he and the previous Count had had a relationship just yet, even though he was had a vague idea that Di Luna already knew - he wasn’t stupid, or he was stupid, but he wasn’t that stupid. His knowledge of what was going on around him and the feelings of other people was certainly far better than any other sorts of intelligence that he might have had. If it came up in the future, then he would tell Di Luna about it (or he would tell him as much as he wanted to know. Hearing about his father’s sex life probably wasn’t what Di Luna wanted to spend an afternoon doing), but right now it felt like it would complicate things more.

“Do you want to tell Leonora?” Ferrando asked. “Or do you want to leave it until the morning?” He knew that Di Luna had strange sleep patterns, but he didn’t think that Leonora was the same. Usually when Ferrando had seen her in the mornings she had had the distinct look of somebody who had just woken up, and not somebody who had been up all night and was going to bed as the sun was coming up as was Di Luna’s usual night-time routine.

“I don’t mind,” Di Luna said. “She wants to know, I know that much, but she won’t die if she has to wait a few more hours.”

They were approaching the top of the ridge and the building of the palace now, and Di Luna and Ferrando could both see that the window of Leonora’s bedroom was illuminated, while Di Luna’s wasn’t - Di Luna supposed that Leonora must have snuffed his candle out after he left, because he certainly hadn’t thought to do it himself. It could have been that Leonora had fallen asleep without extinguishing her candle, because she had done that before, but it also wouldn’t have surprised Di Luna, given how invested she had been in getting Ferrando and Di Luna into bed with each other, if she had been waiting up for them to return so that she could quiz them about what had been talked about. He was glad that Ferrando had managed to persuade him back to the palace, because she wouldn’t have been too happy if she had stayed up all night only for Di Luna and Ferrando to stumble back in in the morning.

Di Luna wasn’t keen, though, to stop himself from doing anything with Ferrando for any longer, and if they stopped off to talk to Leonora that would probably take at least a few minutes. Ferrando was bad at sharing, hence the way he had been acting recently, but Di Luna was very bad at being patient. Yes, it had taken quite a time for him and Ferrando to get to this point, so really he could wait for a bit longer, but God he did not want to.

“Let’s just go to bed,” Di Luna said, almost without thinking that he had said it. Ferrando almost looked surprised for a moment, but the expression faded as soon as it had appeared. “Leonora doesn’t need to know everything right away.”

“She’ll probably hear us anyway,” Ferrando joked. “I know some of the other soldiers did last time.”

“And whose fault was that?” Di Luna laughed, putting his arms around Ferrando’s shoulders. What he wanted was for Ferrando to pick him up so that he could put his legs around his waist, but if Ferrando knew, which he probably did, he wasn’t playing along yet. That was probably fair, because Di Luna didn’t want to be dropped on the ground, but he also wouldn’t have argued with being manhandled a little, especially not if it was Ferrando doing it and it was as an overture to doing something considerably more fun.

“I think you were the one making all the noise,” Ferrando pointed out.

Di Luna came up on his toes and pulled Ferrando down so that he could kiss him again. “I think there’s a way you could solve that this time,” he said.

“What, being worse?”

Di Luna knew that Ferrando knew what he meant, but he was still amused but the response, and quite impressed by the fact that he could actually have a coherent thought when Di Luna was actively trying to turn him on enough that he would be unable to think straight. Di Luna knew that he could do it - he hadn’t really intended to when they were besieging Castellar but it had just been how it had ended up happening for the first time - but it seemed as though Ferrando was enjoying teasing him right back.

“I don’t think you could be bad at it,” Di Luna laughed. “You certainly weren’t _t_ _oo_ bad earlier.”

“Really?” Ferrando asked. “I had no idea what I was doing.” He laughed.

The fact that they had stopped to talk was inconvenient, because everything that he and Ferrando were talking about was just making Di Luna want it even more. Even so, it was good to actually talk about what he and Ferrando were feeling for each other, because they had both been so dreadful at communication for the last god only knew how long. It felt as though, now that Di Luna had actually told Ferrando that he was in love with him, everything that they had been dancing around had suddenly exploded and neither of them could stop themselves from thinking it. Considering that he had barely been able to confront the thought of talking about his feelings with Leonora, it was remarkable to Di Luna that he had ever thought that he was in love with her. This felt completely different from that, and it was all that Di Luna wanted, rather than being something awkward that he thought he might eventually have to confront.

Okay, maybe he would have to tell Leonora as soon as they got back, even if it was just to thank her for forcing him to confront his feelings. Maybe she would still be awake, so he wouldn’t have to stop hanging onto Ferrando for too long, but even if she wasn’t there, he supposed that he owed it to her to tell her what had just happened. It did feel strange, when he thought about it, that he was now going to tell his wife that he was going to leave her for another man. It was even weirder, though, that she was probably just as keen to hear this as he was to tell her it.

“Come on.” Ferrando gave Di Luna a gentle nudge towards the brow of the hill. Di Luna could tell from how firm Ferrando was with him all of a sudden that he just wanted to go and get into bed with him rather than keep messing around talking to Leonora and getting too distracted by the fact that they were going to jump into bed together as soon as they got there to actually continue walking. Di Luna had to concede that he was right about that, assuming that that was indeed what Ferrando was thinking about. “We can carry on talking…” Ferrando made a noise in his throat that Di Luna understood to mean ‘we can carry on talking tomorrow, now that I think of it, because neither of us is going to have the spare mental energy to carry on a conversation when we get inside’.

Di Luna was just glad that he didn’t have to point out that he didn’t actually want to have a conversation when he already had something else in mind to do when they got back into the palace. He just hoped that nobody would try to start a conversation with him or Ferrando, because even though Di Luna usually could be left fairly well alone, it would just figure that the one night he wanted to do something as soon as he got in would be the night that somebody had something very urgent to talk to him about. He wouldn’t even be able to focus on it, because all of his mental space at present was being taken up thinking about what he wanted Ferrando to do to him when they got back to the palace.

Fortunately, by the time that Ferrando had started prodding Di Luna to hurry up again, they were close enough to the palace that it was only a few more minutes’ walk away, and even though Di Luna didn’t love trekking up hills in service of his own hormones he had to admit that it probably could have been worse. They could, for example, not have settled anything and have been walking home in silence after having an argument. On the other end of the scale, Di Luna wasn’t sure that he would have wanted to be walking back home after he and Ferrando had had sex in the woods, because he would probably have been rather sore and Ferrando would probably just have been smug about it, even though it would have been his fault.

Unfortunately for Di Luna’s chances of getting into bed with Ferrando in under two minutes after getting back into the palace, which he was sure they could have done if they had wanted to, Leonora was waiting for them in the palace’s main hall. There was certain to be no getting rid of her, even though Di Luna could tell from the way Ferrando exhaled sharply when he saw her that he wished there was, but at the same time sending Ferrando off before talking to her would probably have seemed suspicious, even if the honest explanation was just that Ferrando didn’t really like Leonora that much. (Di Luna truly didn’t understand that. Even though he had realised that no, he wasn’t in love with Leonora, he could admit that he at least liked her on a non-romantic, non-sexual level. Ferrando just didn’t like her and didn’t want anything to do with her.)

Fortunately, Leonora must have seen that Di Luna and Ferrando had other things in mind to do, so she made a face at the two of them and let them leave without having a conversation. Di Luna would have laughed if he wasn’t distracted by the fact that he had been hoping for this to happen to him on some level for years. Even better, he and Ferrando could actually take their time over it now, rather than having to finish in a hurry because they had other things to do, which they had had to do the previous time.

It took Ferrando and Di Luna under two minutes to get to Di Luna’s rooms in the palace, which they would be able to be in private with no interruptions. Di Luna had very few servants because he found other people hanging around and knowing what he did in private to be extremely annoying, and he didn’t like having to bind his chest all the time, so when he was in his rooms he usually wouldn’t wear a binder, so he especially didn’t want servants wandering around when he was not wearing a binder. Di Luna wasn’t too sure about whether he would leave the binder on now. On the one hand, Ferrando had seen more when they had been besieging Castellar, partly for the obvious reason and partly because Di Luna and Ferrando had been sleeping in the same tent and Di Luna felt awful the next day if he slept wearing a binder. Besides that, Ferrando would also see more if this went how he wanted it to. On the other hand, the idea made him more than just a little bit uncomfortable.

He supposed he would have to see how he felt when they actually got into bed, rather than over-thinking something that might not even happen, because he had done plenty of that over the last few days. Yes, Ferrando was awful at communication, clearly, but even he should be able to figure out that he should stop and ask before removing the chest binder, and Di Luna supposed that if he was going to trust him to sleep with him then he would also have to trust him to know not to do this.

The fact that nobody other than Di Luna and Ferrando were there was especially convenient right now, because the second the door was closed, Ferrando had Di Luna pushed up against the wall and was kissing him almost immediately. Di Luna made a particularly embarrassing noise, partly because he was surprised by how suddenly Ferrando had gone from acting fairly normally even if he was in a bit of a hurry to get to wherever he was going to to holding Di Luna against the wall and kissing him hard enough that Di Luna was sure his lips would be bruised when they stopped, but also partly because he was suddenly orders of magnitude more aroused that he had been even the first time he and Ferrando had done this. There had certainly been less preamble the previous time: Ferrando had practically dragged him into the tent, paused briefly to make sure Di Luna knew what was going to happen and that he wanted it, and then shoved Di Luna onto his back without either of them undressing fully. It possibly wasn’t the most romantic way for Di Luna to have had sex with the man he had since realised that he was in love with for the first time - but it had still been something excellent to dwell on for the past couple of months.

It was also strange - or, considering that he didn’t love her, not actually that strange - how unlike his first time with Leonora had been. He had thought, since he had already been with Ferrando before, he might not feel as awkward about it, and in any case it was their wedding night so they were supposed to, but he had hated the whole experience. It hadn’t happened again, and neither he nor Leonora had seemed to want the other. Certainly not to the extent that he and Ferrando wanted each other now, but really not at all. That had been clinical, awkward, dispassionate, and, above all, it had just been unpleasant. While there was still potential for this to become awkward, it was neither clinical nor dispassionate. It didn’t even need saying that it certainly wasn’t unpleasant.

Well, it wasn’t unpleasant except for the fact that the angle that Ferrando had Di Luna at and the differences in their heights had Di Luna craning his neck up at a somewhat uncomfortable angle so that he could kiss Ferrando, but that was easily remedied. “Just a second.” Di Luna gently pushed Ferrando away by his shoulders, breathing heavily for a few seconds so that he could catch his breath. He had been jolted by Ferrando grabbing him a minute ago, and he hadn’t been able to focus enough to get his breath back while Ferrando had been holding him against the wall and kissing him.

“What’s wrong?” Ferrando pulled away for a moment, but Di Luna dragged him back in against him again. For a second, Ferrando looked confused, but that disappeared quickly when Di Luna dragged Ferrando’s head in against his neck to let him bite him. That wasn’t what Di Luna had been intending to be the result of this, but he wasn’t going to argue with it: even though Ferrando was being more than just a little rough with him, he was good at it. He wasn’t actually biting Di Luna aggressively, more grazing his teeth against the side of his neck and then lightly nipping than actually doing something that would leave huge, visible bruises and marks once they were done.

Di Luna wouldn’t have minded having visible marks, of course, but it would probably draw comment since even somebody who had no prior knowledge of his marriage would have been able to tell just how dispassionate his marriage with Leonora was. Him suddenly making up with somebody that he had fallen out with and them disappearing to his rooms together, when he would usually go to Leonora if he wanted to see her for some reason, and then him returning with bites all over his neck the next day, would look extremely suspicious. Di Luna knew that Ferrando liked men, but he didn’t want to inadvertently cause everybody else to know that too, if Ferrando didn’t want it.

Di Luna came up on his toes in a way that wouldn’t accidentally stop Ferrando from biting him, because he was really enjoying that, even if it was making him want Ferrando even more, even though that felt impossible. Even though Di Luna had been trying not to disturb him, Ferrando made a confused half-growl noise when Di Luna moved and actually bit down properly on Di Luna’s neck. Di Luna couldn’t tell if the sound that he made was an indicator that Ferrando wanted him to stay still or if he was just confused, but either way the combination of the sound and being bitten made Di Luna gasp.

“Did you want me to stop, or did you just want to be bitten?” Ferrando laughed, his face still buried in Di Luna’s neck. “Because I would have started doing that even if you hadn’t got me to stop kissing you.” He was still very close to Di Luna, but he had pulled away a little bit so that he could speak intelligibly rather than just mumbling against his skin.

“I wanted to stop having to bend my head up,” Di Luna gasped. It was difficult to force the words out, especially because Ferrando had moved from biting his neck to kissing what exposed skin on his chest he could see through his shirt. “If you want your shirt back you just have to ask,” he said, almost without thinking. “You’re taller than me but I wouldn’t mind if you kept kissing me.”

“You don’t need to take the shirt off at all,” Ferrando said. This solved the problem of the fact that Di Luna wasn’t entirely sure about taking his chest binder off, and was also indescribably arousing. “We can certainly fix you having to crane your neck, though.” Right now, Di Luna wouldn’t have argued with having to keep holding his head at an uncomfortable angle, just so long as it meant getting what he wanted, but at least Ferrando was being accommodating.

Ferrando pushed Di Luna back against the wall again so that his back was flat against it, and picked Di Luna up so that his legs were around his waist and his weight was supported half by Ferrando holding him in place with his body and half by the wall itself. Di Luna put his arms around Ferrando’s neck and moved to kiss him again. On the one hand, Di Luna wanted this to progress far quicker than it was doing, but he could also tell that Ferrando knew that, and was intending to get Di Luna as turned on as he possibly could before he finally allowed himself to be coaxed into bed. On the other hand, though, Di Luna was also enjoying the attention that he was getting from Ferrando.

“You know,” Di Luna said, when he finally pulled away from kissing Ferrando, “when I said that I didn’t want to have to crane my neck I did have something else in mind.”  
“I know,” Ferrando said smugly. He pressed himself fully against Di Luna, although Di Luna felt sure that this would be turning Ferrando on more than it was him.

Well, Di Luna wasn’t arguing with what Ferrando was doing to him, since it was all going to lead to the same place eventually - or he hoped that it was. “And you were the one complaining about me wanting to be taken while we were in the woods.”

Di Luna couldn’t see any reason that Ferrando wouldn’t also want what he wanted. What Ferrando was doing to him now certainly suggested that he wanted it as badly as Di Luna did, certainly; nobody who didn’t desperately want another person would be pawing at their partner like Ferrando was pawing at Di Luna.

“I know that too,” Ferrando said. He didn’t sound quite so smug this time, because Di Luna was working his hand down Ferrando’s chest and stomach in a way that would have been obviously calculated to distract him. “I…” And Ferrando clearly was distracted. Di Luna had to support a little more of his own weight with his back pressed against the wall, but he didn’t mind because at least this would probably lead to him getting what he wanted.

“And we both still seem to be dressed.” Di Luna didn’t want to let Ferrando get away with teasing him for too long. He pulled Ferrando closer against him, biting his jaw just below his ear and then holding his head still so that he could speak in a low voice directly into his ear. “And I know I might have only been with you once, but I think us not getting undressed… well, preferably a couple of minutes ago but definitely now… just might make it a little bit difficult for you to be inside me.” Di Luna didn’t need to see Ferrando’s face to see the way his eyes widened when he said that. “And I think we both know that you want that.”


	6. CHAPTER FIVE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> listen. you would not BELIEVE the amount of time it took me to get around to editing and posting this. but here it is now. editing this was painfully embarrassing so please excuse any glaring typographical errors, and also do not read too much into ferrando and di luna's Activities(tm).

It was lucky for both Ferrando and Di Luna that they were so well tuned to each other’s wants and needs as well as to each other’s ways of speaking, because coming from anybody else, Di Luna suddenly going from seeming almost awkward to practically demanding that Ferrando fuck him right there would have been a little jarring. As it was, however, Ferrando put him back on the ground, pausing for a second for them both to shed their cloaks, because they were thick, heavy, and not particularly comfortable to wear inside (or easy to wash, which could become a problem very quickly if they were going to have sex in the next couple of minutes), and then dragged Di Luna into the bedchamber.

He had been in bed with Di Luna probably hundreds of times over the past few years, and even though he had often found himself imagining that Di Luna would suddenly demand sex from him, he had never imagined either that Di Luna would actually think it, let alone say the words out loud, or that it would cause Ferrando to go from “hard, but happy to keep fussing over and petting Di Luna until he was ready for it” to “oh, God, now, please” in such a short amount of time.

“What you were saying about this shirt.” Di Luna suddenly stopped taking his boots off, looking more than just a little concerned, as he spoke.

“If you want to leave it on then do. I don’t want…” Ferrando was somewhat able to be coherent, but he couldn’t quite conjure up the phrase ‘to make you uncomfortable’ when none of the blood in his body was anywhere near his mind, and he wasn’t that articulate even when it was. “And the…” He indicated his own chest, because even when he was barely able to think he still knew that that was an area that Di Luna would prefer not to have to acknowledge in just his ordinary life, let alone during sex.

“Oh, no, I don’t mind what happens with the shirt,” Di Luna said. Ferrando was amazed that he had even been able to extrapolate that meaning from what he had said. “I won’t take the binder off, but if you actually want me to wear the shirt…” Now that he and Ferrando had both taken their boots off, Di Luna came back over to him from where he was sat on the bed, grabbing Ferrando’s hips and pulling him in close to him. “I don’t know if you were joking when you said I should keep the shirt on…”

“Not really,” Ferrando admitted. There was something that was distracting in just the right way about the thought of Di Luna wearing his shirt while he was inside him, but it was probably best not to dedicate too much thought to that before he and Di Luna had even started undressing, really. Instead, he put his arms around Di Luna, picking him up again so that Di Luna could wrap his legs around his waist like he had been before. The pressure against Ferrando’s cock from Di Luna’s legs around him made him gasp in a way that would have been embarrassing if Di Luna hadn’t moaned quietly too at the sensation.

“Oh…” Di Luna wrapped his legs tightly around Ferrando’s waist, and rocked his hips against Ferrando’s for a few seconds until he seemed to think that he had made whatever point it was he had been trying to make. “Oh, you’re just showing off now,” Di Luna laughed, wrapping his arms around Ferrando’s neck again and kissing him before he continued to speak to him. “If you like the idea of me keeping the shirt on, then I certainly will,” he told Ferrando. “Not that I can see why that’s what you’ve latched onto over everything else.” He laughed, moving one hand down from the back of Ferrando’s neck to stroke his chest.

“Please.” Ferrando wasn’t sure how he was still managing to support Di Luna’s waist considering how weak at the knees he felt, even though that was a strange reaction to be having, and he wanted to progress things quickly. But, on the other hand, if Di Luna liked being picked up, which he certainly seemed to from how he had immediately wrapped his legs around Ferrando’s waist even though there were far more interesting things they could be doing right now. “But I really don’t want you to feel uncomfortable,” Ferrando said, even though Di Luna was now rubbing against him in a way that made it obvious that he was trying to making him so turned on that he would just throw Di Luna onto the bed and fuck him then and there. “So tell me if—”

“I won’t be able to tell you anything if you won’t get on with undressing me,” Di Luna pointed out.

Ferrando laughed. “That’s a good point.”

Di Luna unhooked his legs from around Ferrando’s waist and hopped back down onto the ground again. Ferrando kept one hand on Di Luna’s lower back to make sure that he didn’t fall onto the floor, and immediately pulled him closer in when he was back on the floor again. “But the same goes for you.” Di Luna stood up on his toes and kissed Ferrando again, surprisingly gently considering how fiercely he had been kissing him before. “I’ll be gentle, since you were clearly a virgin last time.”

Ferrando laughed again after a few seconds, when he caught up to the joke. “I thought you said it wasn’t that bad!” He was already unfastening the belt of Di Luna’s robe, and Di Luna continued to fuss over him, gently kissing his neck and shoulders while Ferrando moved to start unfastening the buttons and other unnecessarily complicated fastenings that kept Di Luna’s robe closed. Eventually, Di Luna got sick of waiting and pushed Ferrando’s hands away so that he could unfasten it for himself. There were bruises starting to form on Di Luna’s neck now from where Ferrando had been biting him, but the more interesting marks were on Ferrando’s jaw. Di Luna had hardly even bitten him, but Ferrando was either a lot paler or bruised more easily so where Di Luna had bitten him almost looked purple now.

“It wasn’t,” Di Luna conceded, kissing the bruise on Ferrando’s neck and then letting his robe fall off him onto the floor when Ferrando pushed it off his shoulders. Ferrando still couldn’t figure out how the fastenings on Di Luna’s robe worked, but then again he hadn’t really been paying attention to what Di Luna had been doing while he was unfastening it, and he’d done it incredibly quickly, for understandable reasons. His mind was elsewhere, but he hoped that Di Luna would be able to understand that. “But it wasn’t that good either.”

“You’ve still clearly been thinking about it since,” Ferrando pointed out, pulling Di Luna close to him again now that he was partly undressed.

“I have.” Di Luna was probably about as undressed as he was comfortable being until he got Ferrando out of some of his clothes, so he decided to focus on that for a few seconds. “But…” As Di Luna spoke, he started trying to unfasten the over-shirt of Ferrando’s military uniform. Rather than letting him get frustrated with the fiddly fastenings, of which there were far too many for the uniform to be removed easily - it was an oversight that Ferrando was thinking of asking Di Luna to redesign - Ferrando did it himself.

“But?” Ferrando prompted him, pulling his over-shirt off.

“But you also had me on my hands and knees,” Di Luna said. Something in his expression changed, but Ferrando couldn’t quite figure out what it was. “And you didn’t touch me at all.” Ferrando wasn’t quite sure where this was going, but he was sure that he would like it. He would have liked anything that Di Luna asked him to do, especially now. “So I had to deal with it myself.”

“Sorry.” Ferrando wasn’t sure what Di Luna was getting at, so this seemed like the best compromise.

“Don’t apologise.” Di Luna leaned in and kissed Ferrando again, and Ferrando could feel him smiling against his lips. “I’ve had plenty of time to realise what feels good, and you clearly haven’t had that sort of opportunity.” He kissed him again, and Ferrando couldn’t help himself from gently biting down on Di Luna’s lower lip. “Fortunately…” Di Luna only got one word in before he went back to kiss Ferrando for a third time. “Fortunately I can show you exactly what to do. I think you’ll like that.”

“God, yes.” Ferrando groaned when Di Luna nudged his knee in between his thighs in a way that was clearly meant just to tease but not give him any real satisfaction. “You’re so frustrating.”

“I know,” Di Luna said smugly. “You like it, don’t you?” he said.

“Yes.” Ferrando kissed down Di Luna’s neck to his now-exposed shoulder.

The shirt that Di Luna was wearing was far too big for him, because Ferrando was both a lot taller and a lot broader across the shoulders than Di Luna was to begin with, and both Ferrando and Di Luna preferred to wear loose-fitting clothing, and Ferrando was completely prepared to take advantage of that fact to touch him as much as he liked, especially if Di Luna liked it, as he seemed to, and was now also going to show him exactly what he liked to have done to him in bed. In truth, Ferrando was glad that Di Luna had decided to tell him and show him what he liked, because he certainly wouldn’t have had the initiative to ask for himself. Still, if he had been in a position where his partner was making no effort to please him, he couldn’t see that he would have been very satisfied with the result.

He certainly wouldn’t have told the other party that he was in love with him, he could say that. He would probably have written it all off as a stupid infatuation and tried to forget about it, and he certainly wouldn’t also be kissing somebody who was that sort of selfish. Fortunately for him, and especially for him tonight, Di Luna must have been much more forgiving, or possibly much more needy, than Ferrando was. Whatever the explanation was, Ferrando wasn’t going to think too far into it, because if Di Luna was giving him a second chance then he was about to be too busy thinking about what he was going to be doing to Di Luna to make up for it to be able to consider the reason for it. He wanted to make up for not being particularly good the previous time partly just because he felt embarrassed for how he had acted before but partly because he was sure that it would have been far more interesting for them both if they were both fully enjoying it.

Ferrando didn’t want to pull away from Di Luna, who had gone from talking to him back to kissing him insistently, but he had to so that he could actually take off his shirt. Di Luna clearly also didn’t want to have to pull away from Ferrando, because he made a noise half-way between a whine and a growl when Ferrando stopped kissing him for even a couple of seconds. As soon as Ferrando had dropped his shirt on the floor, Di Luna jumped back into his arms aggressively enough that Ferrando was almost knocked over by it, and started kissing him even more ferociously than he had been before. Ferrando groaned and pushed forward against him.

Ferrando was still far too dressed for this: as much as he knew that they made him look good, and they were part of his military uniform in any case, fitted hose were not a good choice of clothing for what he and Di Luna were doing. Fortunately, as soon as he managed to persuade Di Luna to get into bed rather than still standing and mostly dressed, that would be far more easy to remedy. Unfortunately, Di Luna had barely any attention span when he didn’t have Ferrando trying to distract him, and kept getting too distracted by what he wanted Ferrando to do to him to actually let him do anything. If Ferrando hadn’t wanted Di Luna so much that he could barely think, it would have been funny. As it was, however, it was a little irritating.

However, Di Luna had seemed to enjoy Ferrando picking him up as he had done a minute ago, and Ferrando liked using it as a way to turn Di Luna on and to assert his strength. Also, it would be a convenient way to get Di Luna from still standing on the floor kissing him to being on the bed with Ferrando in him as he wanted to be without having to stop awkwardly, or having to stop touching Di Luna, which was all Ferrando wanted now. However, Di Luna moved first this time, grabbing Ferrando’s hands and dragging him over to the bed before Ferrando had the chance to pick him up again. That was almost a shame; Ferrando had been thinking about just stripping off his and Di Luna’s hose and fucking him against the wall. That way he could still keep kissing him, unlike when Di Luna had been on his hands and knees before, although at that point in time Ferrando hadn’t really wanted to kiss him, because he was in a bad mood and just wanted to be in Di Luna without thinking about his feelings for him.

Di Luna would probably have liked being shoved up against a wall, in any case, considering how much he had enjoyed Ferrando picking him up previously.

He supposed that he could draw it out a little longer if they were in bed, though, and Ferrando wouldn’t have minded that. God knew he had waited for long enough to do this properly, so he would take his time over it if he wanted to. In any case, Ferrando was happy to let Di Luna decide what they were going to do, because it seemed like he knew what he wanted, and even though Ferrando was technically more experienced than him, all of this was uncharted territory for him, really. Ferrando had had a brief phase of sleeping with any man who would have him after the previous Count died, but he had never met any men who had transitioned before Di Luna did so, and he had therefore never slept with any. He was happy to let Di Luna tell him, and especially to show him, what to do and how to do it, since he clearly knew his own body better than Ferrando did.

Thinking for too long about just how Di Luna had come to understand what he did and didn’t want to have done to him, and just how he liked to be touched was likely to send Ferrando completely mad, but he still knew that he would find himself thinking about it at great length in the future. He was just glad that he wouldn’t have to feel guilty for it now, because Di Luna was clearly just as interested in Ferrando as Ferrando was in Di Luna. There was more need for Ferrando to deny “thinking about” Di Luna extremely regularly, especially since they had besieged Castellar.

Ferrando allowed Di Luna to drag him down onto the bed and, once Ferrando was on top of him, even though both of them were still wearing their hose, he wrapped his legs around Ferrando’s waist and started kissing him again. Ferrando wanted to be in him now, but at the same time he could see that Di Luna was enjoying what they were doing, and he was happy to continue to indulge him for a little while longer. Hopefully, Di Luna was as keen for things to progress as Ferrando was, because the only other option he could see was that Di Luna was trying to drive him insane. He could tell that Di Luna was enjoying the teasing, and Ferrando was enjoying it too, but God, it was rapidly becoming maddening.

Ferrando finally stood up on his knees and pushed Di Luna down when he tried to drag him back onto him again when the level of arousal was starting to become unbearable. “You are going to be the death of me,” he laughed, keeping both his hands on Di Luna’s shoulders so that he couldn’t keep pulling him back down and delaying it inevitably.  
“I know I am,” Di Luna said smugly, unwrapping his thighs a little way from around Ferrando’s waist, enough that Ferrando would be left wanting the contact but not enough that he wouldn’t be getting any stimulation from it at all. “So…” He smiled and brought Ferrando’s hands closer to his throat. “Are you going to keep holding me down while you’re inside me?” Ferrando couldn’t hide how much Di Luna being this vocal about what he wanted was turning him on. “Or is all this just for show?”

“I don’t think it’ll be as much fun if I hold you down,” Ferrando said, not bending down to kiss him again however much he wanted to. “And I won’t choke you, if that’s what this is a hint for me to do.” He put his hands either side of Di Luna’s head on the mattress, rather than leaving his hands near his throat. In truth, the idea was a little tempting, but he was still afraid of the idea of accidentally hurting Di Luna. He certainly couldn’t see how being choked could be enjoyable, but he supposed he wouldn’t have minded doing it for Di Luna. He just wanted to wait for a little bit longer before he allowed himself to do it, so that he knew Di Luna’s limits a little better than he did now.

“That’s no fun,” Di Luna said. He put his hand around Ferrando’s wrist in a somewhat encouraging way. “But I suppose I understand.”

Ferrando laughed. “I think you’ll enjoy it even so,” he pointed out.

Di Luna put one hand on Ferrando’s chest and gently carded the other hand through his hair. “Now…” He ran the hand that was on Ferrando’s chest down until his fingertips rested just above the hem of his hose. Ferrando pushed lightly against him in response. “I think I was going to show you want I want you to do to me, wasn’t I? Because you don’t really know how to touch me, but I know, and I’m sure from this…” He ran his hand down and stroked Ferrando through his clothes. Ferrando must have looked particularly wide-eyed, even though he thought he had managed to keep his emotions fairly well in check when Di Luna had said this, because Di Luna laughed again. “I’m sure that you want to know.”

Ferrando just nodded, because he couldn’t force any words out. Completely at a loss for words but wanting to do something that would show willing, he bent down to kiss Di Luna again, taking his hands away from his shoulders. Sensing the opportunity, Di Luna flipped them over so that Ferrando was lying on his back, with Di Luna straddling him. Ferrando was a little surprised, because Di Luna didn’t look too strong even though Ferrando had seen him running around with a sword, but he wasn’t actually displeased by this. For one thing, Di Luna clearly knew what he wanted to do here, and if Ferrando wasn’t on top of him like he had been last time (or more accurately behind him) then he wouldn’t be able to frustrate him like he had last time. (Or had Ferrando frustrated him last time? He seemed not to have minded having to touch himself, and they were both now, weren’t they? Ferrando couldn’t imagine that if he had thought the situation impossible to remedy that he would have come back for a second go, but then again he wasn’t Di Luna.)

“You do realise,” Ferrando said, once he finally managed to figure out how to speak, “that if you’re on top of me I can’t actually undress you properly.”

“Stop fussing.” Di Luna stopped leaning his weight forward against Ferrando’s shoulders as he had been since he had flipped them over and got on top of Ferrando, pushing down against Ferrando in a way that briefly stopped Ferrando from being able to think. When Ferrando came back down to earth, Di Luna had taken off his shirt (but not his binder, not that Ferrando had any hang-ups about that. If he didn’t want to take it off then he didn’t have to) and put his hands back against Ferrando’s shoulders.

“What do you want me to do?” Ferrando asked, propping himself up on his forearms.

“Nothing just yet,” Di Luna said. “You don’t know what to do yet. Let me show you first.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You can keep calling me that, certainly,” Di Luna said. “Especially when you’re inside me.” Di Luna was visibly a little surprised when Ferrando grabbed the shirt that he had just taken off but was still holding and tossed it onto the floor along with his shirt, but he didn’t look displeased with the fact that he had taken the initiative. “How will I know which one’s mine now?”

“They’re both mine,” Ferrando said, without missing a beat. Di Luna laughed and shrugged. “And you won’t need to think about it for a good while.”

“Exactly,” Di Luna said. “If you’re going to last as long as I hope you will…” He paused for a second and hopped off Ferrando’s lap to sit beside him on the bed. “And especially if you’re as good as I hope you will be, then I don’t think I’ll remember which one I was wearing by the time I need to get dressed again.” That was probably true, because the two shirts were the same colour and the same size, but by the same token they were the same colour and the same size, so it didn’t matter which one Di Luna took and which one Ferrando took.

“Such a shame you can’t afford your own shirts,” Ferrando joked.

“I like wearing yours,” Di Luna said, his tone simple enough that it somehow . “Except, I don’t want to be wearing anything right now. Well, apart from…” He gestured to his chest binder, and Ferrando nodded. “And I certainly don’t want you to be wearing anything right now either.”

Di Luna moved across to kiss first along Ferrando’s neck and jaw, and then to begin moving down his chest and stomach, before pulling Ferrando’s hose half-way down his thighs. He gave Ferrando just enough time to finish kicking his hose off before he wrapped his hand around him. As soon as Di Luna touched him, Ferrando moaned and pulled him up again to start kissing him even more intensely than he had been before. He hadn’t expected that Di Luna would take this much control when they were in bed, but God he liked it. He had completely - but consensually - dominated Di Luna when they had been besieging Castellar, even though that had only been once, and while Ferrando supposed that he had enjoyed it, he didn’t mind the fact that Di Luna wanted control here. The fact that he didn’t know what he was doing really made Ferrando a little nervous, but he had every confidence that Di Luna was going to be an excellent teacher.

“There’s a bottle of oil on the nightstand next to you,” Di Luna mumbled against Ferrando’s mouth. Ferrando took the hint and reached over to take the bottle. Di Luna took it from him without stopping stroking Ferrando. He kissed Ferrando’s neck and briefly pulled his hand away to pour some of the oil into the palm of his hand. At least that was something that Ferrando wouldn’t have to tell him about, not that he expected that he would have to tell him much: he had used a little the previous time but since they were on the battlefield he hadn’t had all the supplies that he would ideally have needed.

He hadn’t even had a sheath then, because he hadn’t been expecting to have sex, although that wasn’t entirely necessary because there was no biological way in which Di Luna could have got pregnant from it, and Ferrando would surely have noticed before that point if there was anything wrong for him. It had been about twelve years since Ferrando had last had sex at that point, and Di Luna had been a virgin, but that was in the past now.

“What do you want me to…?” Ferrando whimpered, whatever he had been trying to say fading completely from his mind as soon as Di Luna started stroking him again, this time with his palm slick with oil. “Fadrique - sir—”

“Good boy.” Ferrando pushed his hips up against Di Luna’s hand, partly in response to the praise, which was something that he had always liked even if he hadn’t known how to explain that to his partners and Di Luna just seemed to instinctively know, but mostly because what Di Luna was doing to him felt so good. “I don’t want you to do anything more than what you’re doing now just yet,” Di Luna said softly, his lips close to Ferrando’s. “I’ll tell you - and show you - as soon as I want you to do something.” He kissed him again. “Is that alright?” There was an obvious edge of ‘or do I have to do something to stop you from trying anything that I don’t tell you to?’ behind his words.

Ferrando moaned into Di Luna’s mouth, because he couldn’t hold focus for long enough to reply. However, Di Luna seemed to want a reply: he didn’t pull his hand away or stop kissing him, but he tugged at Ferrando’s hair with his free hand. “Sorry - I - yes.” Ferrando must have looked like a mess now, but for one thing it was only Di Luna who would be able to see that, and it also wasn’t as though Di Luna wasn’t beginning to look more and more disarrayed the longer they went on.

“Good boy,” Di Luna repeated, continuing to sound annoyingly coherent, especially considering how far away from his body Ferrando’s mind currently felt.

Di Luna continued to stroke Ferrando, moving to kiss down his neck to his shoulders. It was clear that he knew just what he was doing to Ferrando, but Ferrando also didn’t mind that, because he was sure that he could provoke the same reaction in Di Luna if he wanted to. (And also if he knew how to reconnect his mind with his body: as it currently stood, he felt like he was miles away.)

Fortunately, Di Luna knew that Ferrando wouldn’t be able to last for much longer if he kept going for much longer, and pulled his hand away so that Ferrando wouldn’t be finished before they had even started. He was much more efficient suddenly at undressing, and pulled down and kicked off his own hose in a couple of seconds. Ferrando supposed that he must have really wanted it all of a sudden, because he had spent what had felt like hours kissing and touching Ferrando through his clothes before he had finally allowed him to undress.

Di Luna started kissing him again almost immediately once he had undressed, putting his hands against Ferrando’s neck and chest and nudging his knee between Ferrando’s legs. Ferrando rubbed against his thigh almost without being aware that he was doing it, until Di Luna finally moved his thigh away. Ferrando couldn’t complain about the sudden loss of stimulation, fortunately: what he and Di Luna had been doing already felt good, but Ferrando knew that it would feel even better when he was finally inside of Di Luna. It had last time, and there hadn’t been nearly this much foreplay before it and Ferrando had been too overemotional to really focus on what he was doing to Di Luna. He couldn’t imagine what it would feel like this time, when he and Di Luna had sorted out whatever issues had formed between them and had been building up to what was about to happen for a long time.

“Mmh.” Di Luna pulled away from Ferrando for a second. “I’m not going to let you inside me just yet,” he said softly, running his fingers slowly down Ferrando’s chest and stomach before rolling onto his back so that he could sit with his back against the headboard of the bed. He pulled Ferrando on top of him to kneel between his thighs, putting one hand on his shoulder and the other on his hip as he continued to speak. “Or at least…” He put his head to the side. “At least, not your cock, and not just now.” Di Luna reached down and stroked Ferrando again, just once. “I’m not going to make you wait much longer, though.”

Ferrando nodded, because right now he would have been willing to do anything in order to please Di Luna. “What do you want me to do?” he asked. “Because I—”

“I know you don’t know yet,” Di Luna said. He was being very gentle with Ferrando: possibly gentler than Ferrando deserved, but if that was what Di Luna wanted to do then Ferrando didn’t want to argue with him. “Do you want me to show you first?” Di Luna reached his hand down to touch himself without looking away from Ferrando. “Or shall I tell you what to do while you’re touching me?” he asked, in a tone that made Ferrando think that he wanted to show him first.

“I…” Ferrando didn’t know what to say, but he did know that he hadn’t realised it was possible for him to be this hard without finishing as soon as he was touched. “Please. Sir. Show me.”

When Ferrando said that, Di Luna reached up with the hand that he wasn’t rubbing himself with to pull Ferrando down to kiss him. Ferrando felt him gasp into his mouth, and reached his hand down to wrap loosely around himself. Di Luna laughed into Ferrando’s mouth, and then pulled away for a second to say, “I don’t want you to come just yet.” He immediately started kissing Ferrando again once he had spoken, and put his feet against Ferrando’s thighs, not quite wrapping his legs around his waist but making sure that he and Ferrando were touching as much as they possibly could.

“Please…” Ferrando mumbled into Di Luna’s mouth. “I want—”

“I know.” Di Luna kissed him again, before slowly guiding Ferrando’s hand down his stomach. Finally, Ferrando was able to push two fingers inside of Di Luna to begin to rub him. Di Luna moaned and spread himself open a little further with the hand he had been using to rub himself. “I really should have showed you how to do this before.”

“Yes?” Ferrando said, unsure of whether he was referring to what Di Luna had just said or if he was asking Di Luna if he liked it.

“Mmh. Yes.” Di Luna tipped his head back, and Ferrando took the opportunity to lean forward and start kissing his neck as he continued to rub him with his fingers. “God.” His voice sounded hoarse. “If I’d known you would be this good…” His head fell back against the headboard of the bed with a small clunk. “Well, I wouldn’t have dealt with it myself all this time. And I certainly wouldn’t have last time.” He laughed as he spoke, but it sounded weak and breathy - albeit not in a bad way. Di Luna reached forward to grab at Ferrando’s hair. “Good boy.”

Clearly, Di Luna had figured out that Ferrando very much liked being praised, based on the way he was leaning into it, but Ferrando also hoped that Di Luna actually was enjoying it. He guessed, based on the sounds that Di Luna was making, that he certainly was enjoying having Ferrando touching him rather than letting him deal with this for himself. Ferrando felt the need to apologise for that, it had been selfish in a way that he didn’t like to act even with people he disliked, and Di Luna clearly wasn’t that. Ferrando wasn’t sure of how to broach the subject of what Di Luna wanted to have him do, but also he found that he was enjoying being able to make Di Luna react to him like this was quite enough for him, or it was enough for him for the time being.

Still.

“Sir?” As Ferrando spoke, Di Luna lifted his chin up with the hand he had been pulling his hair with to begin kissing him again, but Ferrando pulled away so that he could continue to speak. He stopped moving his fingers against Di Luna, but he didn’t take his hand away so that Di Luna was still getting some sort of stimulation, even if he had to work a little for it. Di Luna responded to the loss of active stimulation by pushing his hips slightly against Ferrando’s fingers, his eyes half open in a way that made it obvious to Ferrando that he was getting close. Ferrando liked knowing that he was able to have that effect on Di Luna, but he also wanted to make sure he wasn’t going to frustrate Di Luna’s plans. “Do you want me to finish you before…”

“No, no.” Di Luna gently pulled Ferrando’s hand away from him. “There’s…” He leaned his head back for a second, and gripped tightly onto the sheets with both hands and groaned when Ferrando reached back between his thighs and brushed his thumb slowly along him. “There’s one more thing I want to show you before I want your cock inside me,” he said, “and believe me… I really do want your cock inside me.” As he spoke, Di Luna reached his own hand down again to rub himself as he had just had Ferrando doing. Ferrando wasn’t sure exactly how to phrase the way seeing Di Luna like this made him feel, but he felt it very strongly and would gladly have felt it every day and night for the rest of his life. “But you don’t get to just yet.”

“Sir…” Ferrando wasn’t usually like this, but he also wasn’t usually in a position to be in bed with somebody he was in love with. (Or rather, he was, and he was often - in fact, altogether too often - in that position, because he and Di Luna had often shared a bed in a frustratingly non-sexual way. He had still never thought that anything like this could happen between him and Di Luna, even after it had happened for the first time.) Fortunately for Ferrando, while he was almost embarrassingly desperate for Di Luna to touch him, or to allow him to do something other than watch him, this wasn’t frustrating like not being able to get up the courage to admit to his feelings for Di Luna had been. Even if this was the last time Di Luna ever wanted anything to do with him, Ferrando wasn’t sure that he would have minded that, especially not right now, because this was certainly something that he would be able to remember.

“Keep being good for me and doing exactly what I tell you to do,” Di Luna said softly, still rubbing himself, “and I’ll let you do whatever you like to me.”

“I’d rather have you do things to me,” Ferrando admitted. This was a completely new want for him: even though he hadn’t really been a top in his youth he had been more domineering then and had wanted to be in control. Even at his most submissive then, it had been around half and half between him and his partners. Now, though, if he hadn’t known that Di Luna would probably be uncomfortable with it, certainly too much so to broach the subject, he would want Di Luna inside of him.

But he was more than happy to accept Di Luna telling him exactly what to do and how to do it, especially if that extended to Di Luna telling him where and how to touch him. There were certainly ways in which he could give himself over to the Count without penetration being involved if that wasn’t something that Di Luna wanted to do. (Besides that, Ferrando was enjoying what they were doing now too much to radically change what they were doing now.)

Di Luna finally stopped touching himself after a few seconds of making Ferrando watch but forbidding him by putting his free hand against Ferrando’s chest in a particularly suggestive way, and slowly guided Ferrando’s hand back down between his thighs. Ferrando wasn’t entirely sure of what he wanted - surely he could have just said if he had needed a break, if that had even been what he wanted - but at the same time he would have felt stupid asking. He was sure that Di Luna was going to show him what he wanted soon enough; he had obviously worked out how to let Ferrando know what he needed without it coming across as awkward for either one of them, which Ferrando was thankful for.

And Di Luna finally did show him, moving to open his legs a little wider and turning Ferrando’s hand so that his palm was facing up rather than down towards the bed. Ferrando was confused, but tried not to look it, partly because he didn’t want to seem like an idiot (as much as aspects of this were making him feel completely stupid) but partly because he didn’t want to seem like he was treating Di Luna like some sort of scientific experiment or strange experience, because that wasn’t what he was trying to do. Ferrando groaned quietly as he allowed Di Luna to guide his index finger and middle finger inside of him: even though Di Luna hadn’t yet allowed Ferrando’s cock inside him for a second time, this felt nearly embarrassingly good.

He heard Di Luna laugh quietly at the sound he made, but then he gasped, and Ferrando nearly pulled his fingers back out again, worrying that he had hurt him somehow. Di Luna made a noise and grabbed at Ferrando’s wrist. “Mmh - no, no, just there, just like… God…” Di Luna’s head fell back against the headboard in a way that encouraged Ferrando like his words simply couldn’t. His eyes were completely shut now and his fingers were wrapped tightly around Ferrando’s wrist. Ferrando took that as an instruction to continue what he was doing, even though he wasn’t entirely sure of exactly what he had done to provoke such a reaction, but he could still guess.

Rather than thrusting, he slowly rocked his fingers back and forth inside of Di Luna, watching Di Luna’s expression to make sure he didn’t go too far too quickly, since Di Luna had said that he didn’t want to finish before Ferrando had been inside him properly. Di Luna moaned quietly, but Ferrando could tell, partly from past experience with how loud he could be when he was getting close but partly just from his expression and how he felt around his fingers, that he wasn’t trying to hold back from being too loud for the sake of anybody who might walk past and hear him. The thought of other people knowing that he and Di Luna were doing this would certainly have made Ferrando nervous in the past, but now that he was here and Di Luna’s body was reacting to his like this, the idea was actively arousing. Ferrando wanted to focus on Di Luna, but he still reached down to wrap his hand around himself, stroking himself as he leaned his head down to kiss and lightly bite a line down from Di Luna’s sternum, just below his chest binder, to the top of his thigh.

Di Luna made a noise that didn’t immediately register in Ferrando’s mind as ‘more, please’ and tugged at Ferrando’s hair in a way that wasn’t rough or aggressive but did force Ferrando to look up at him and stop moving his fingers for a couple of seconds so that Di Luna could focus for long enough to speak. “Ferrando?”

“Can I…?” Ferrando didn’t know how to phrase what he wanted to say, or at least not without the possibility of making Di Luna uncomfortable, and instead kissed Di Luna’s hipbone. “Please, sir?”

In response, Di Luna lifted Ferrando’s chin up with one finger, because he clearly couldn’t think enough to be able to speak instead, and nodded. He didn’t say anything, in fact, looking at him, Ferrando didn’t think that he could, even if he had wanted to. Fortunately for both Di Luna and Ferrando, however, he didn’t have to reply verbally: Ferrando knew Di Luna well enough generally to know that they both wanted the same thing, and Ferrando was only too willing to do anything to please Di Luna.

Ferrando didn’t want to admit that he wasn’t entirely sure of what to do, but Di Luna must have known anyway, because he lifted his legs over Ferrando’s shoulders, keeping one finger under Ferrando’s chin to make sure he was still paying attention to him, and guided him to the right spot between his thighs. For a couple of seconds, Ferrando didn’t move his fingers, even though they were still inside of Di Luna, instead slowly licking along the nub between Di Luna’s thighs, until the sounds Di Luna was making in response to him turned from small, breathy whimpers and gasps into moans. Seeing that Di Luna certainly wasn’t bothering to hold back, Ferrando wrapped his lips fully around him, moving his head slowly back and forth at the same time as he began to rock his fingers inside of Di Luna again.

As he moved, trying to keep an even rhythm and match the speed he was going with his fingers and his mouth, Di Luna’s hand moved from under Ferrando’s chin in a way that suggested that Ferrando was clearly getting everything he was doing completely right to the back of his neck, and then to grasp at his hair. Ferrando hadn’t had his hair cut for a few weeks longer than he usually would, which he had thought was just annoying because it was at the point now where it got in his face while also not quite being long enough for him to tie back, but he felt almost as though the universe trying to send him a message, because he liked the way Di Luna was pulling at his hair when he got something he was doing with his fingers or his mouth particularly right in a way that he had rarely enjoyed anything done to him during sex before.

Ferrando was listening to Di Luna’s gasps to make sure that he didn’t get him too close to the edge, but Di Luna clearly got there before he did, because he moved his hand again from Ferrando’s hair to under his chin, pulling his head up again. Ferrando could see that Di Luna was enjoying it and he decided to draw it out just a bit longer. He slowly pulled up, without taking his mouth away fully until the very last moment, but he didn’t pull his fingers out from within Di Luna’s body. Di Luna moaned, still rubbing against the fingers still inside him. Ferrando went back to kissing Di Luna’s thigh and his hips, until Di Luna pulled him back up to start kissing him properly again.

Now Ferrando was fully between Di Luna’s thighs, with Di Luna’s legs around his waist and one hand wound through Ferrando’s hair (Di Luna must have liked that. Ferrando decided on the spot that he would never cut it again, considering how good having it pulled at and petted made him feel too), and he wanted Di Luna more desperately than ever. Fortunately, even at his most anxious, Ferrando would have been able to tell that Di Luna reciprocated his desire.

His other hand was pressed against Ferrando’s lower back, and every so often Ferrando could feel Di Luna’s nails begin to dig into his skin. Even though Ferrando still wasn’t inside of Di Luna, he could tell that Di Luna wanted him to be and he wanted it soon, but he was just getting them both as worked up as they possibly could be without either one of them coming too soon. Di Luna reached a hand down between their bodies and spread himself a little wider open so that, when Ferrando began to slowly rock his hips against Di Luna’s, the full length of his cock rubbed against the nub between Di Luna’s thighs in a way that made them both moan. Ferrando went from kissing Di Luna’s lips to his neck and his shoulders, and Di Luna’s hand slid down between their bodies again to stroke the head of Ferrando’s cock.

Seeing what was about to happen, and wanting it desperately because even though even rubbing against Di Luna like this felt amazing he knew that being fully inside him when they were both this aroused would feel unbelievably amazing, Ferrando stopped rubbing his cock against him quite so quickly. Di Luna reached over beside himself and took the bottle of oil again - fortunately it hadn’t fallen over onto the sheets yet - and poured some more into the palm of his hand.

Ferrando sat up on his knees to make it easier for Di Luna to touch him, and Di Luna wrapped his hand fully around him, stroking from base to tip a few times until Ferrando was finally slick with oil. Di Luna ran the tip of his index finger over the very tip of Ferrando’s cock and mumbled, “Come back down here, I want…”

Ferrando knew what Di Luna wanted, but evidently he moved too slowly because Di Luna grabbed his shoulder and dragged him back down on top of him, although not before grabbing one of the pillows from the other side of the bed and sliding it under his hips. Once he had done this, he wrapped his hand around the base of Ferrando’s cock and put his free hand on Ferrando’s hip to guide him in. As soon as the head of his cock was inside, Ferrando gasped and gripped Di Luna’s hips tightly to steady himself. He didn’t let go of him until he was finally fully inside of Di Luna, who moved his hand from Ferrando’s cock to begin rubbing himself again with his thumb until he was sure that he was completely ready.

“God…” He leaned forward, still idly stroking himself but now doing it with his forefinger, and bit at Ferrando’s lip. “I don’t want you to finish too soon,” he said, and Ferrando’s mouth fell slightly open at just how blatant Di Luna was being about how much he wanted him. “I want you to…”

“Yes, sir.” Di Luna didn’t have to say what he wanted Ferrando to do, because Ferrando was completely prepared now to do anything that Di Luna asked of him.

As soon as Ferrando started to slowly move forward, Di Luna lifted his head again with his free hand, which he moved from Ferrando’s lower back, and at first Ferrando thought it was to kiss him. Instead, Di Luna held him still, looking at him before gasping and pulling him in for a kiss once Ferrando was fully inside of him and pressed up against him as deeply as he could be. This angle felt far, far better for both of them than Di Luna being on his hands and knees had before: Di Luna still had his legs wrapped around Ferrando’s waist but the way his hips were angled thanks to the pillow under him had Ferrando inside him at an angle that was particularly enjoyable for the both of them.

Considering how much of a disappointment this must have been for Di Luna the previous time, Ferrando couldn’t help but feel almost smug at how much and how obviously Di Luna was enjoying this and wanted even more of it. At first, he moved slowly, letting Di Luna hang onto his shoulders and kiss him. Di Luna’s thighs were still around his waist, but he had moved a little so that his right knee was just level with Ferrando’s ribs. Ferrando could feel Di Luna’s right calf a little higher up his side than his waist in a way that, even if it didn’t have Ferrando inside him at a very interesting angle that threatened to send him over the edge sooner than he would have liked if he went too quickly, would have been rather attractive.

Di Luna’s hands went from Ferrando’s shoulders down to his waist, and then to his hips. For a second, Ferrando thought Di Luna wanted him to stop, and slowed down his thrusts just slightly to give him the chance to say if there was something wrong. Instead, Di Luna bit at his neck and rubbed against him. “What’s…” Di Luna trailed off in a way that Ferrando could tell meant that he was having trouble focusing on what he was saying for more than a few seconds.

“Is something wrong?” That was probably the most Ferrando would have been able to say without stopping and pulling out entirely. Fortunately, Di Luna seemed to know that neither of them had the mental space to communicate verbally, because he just shook his head. Once he was completely sure that Di Luna wasn’t just lying in order to make him feel better, Ferrando sped back up again, and he could feel that yes, Di Luna wanted it desperately: he pushed his hips up against Ferrando’s with every thrust, holding Ferrando tightly against him.

“I want…” Di Luna moaned loudly when Ferrando hit the same spot inside him he had previously found with his fingers, and began aggressively kissing Ferrando again. Ferrando could tell that it was getting more and more difficult for Di Luna to think straight, let alone to hold back, and he didn’t want him to. “Ferrando…” He pulled away finally, and Ferrando responded by kissing and biting along the side of his neck. Di Luna was already covered with bruises from Ferrando’s earlier bites, so Ferrando found himself moving further down to the crook of his shoulder so that he didn’t accidentally hurt him. “I want you to finish in me first.”

Ferrando pulled away from his lover’s neck and stopped moving even though he was still deeply inside of him for a second to look at Di Luna with undisguised confusion. “I thought you’d… I thought you wanted to finish first,” he said. “You did last time.” There was probably some reason for Di Luna wanting him to finish first, but Ferrando couldn’t figure it out in his current mental state.

“You know what you’re doing this time.” Di Luna reached between their bodies to rub himself, since Ferrando wasn’t thrusting while they were talking. Ferrando made an apologetic sound and began using his own fingers. Di Luna pulled his fingers away when he realised that what Ferrando was doing felt much better that what he had been doing for himself. Ferrando supposed it must have been the angle, or just the fact that he didn’t do it in exactly the same way as Di Luna did, considering that he had never done this before today, but he wasn’t arguing.

“I want you to finish inside me,” Di Luna said, putting his hand on the back of Ferrando’s neck. Even the idea of being allowed to do that made Ferrando moan. “And then, once you’ve finished… I want you to use your mouth to finish me,” he said.

Ferrando laughed. “You liked that, then?” Di Luna nodded, burying his face in Ferrando’s shoulder. Ferrando had already been close when they started, but the fact that Di Luna had just stated exactly what he wanted had him even closer than he had been just through knowing that he was able to have this effect on Di Luna. “Then…” He began to thrust again, as slowly as he could without accidentally driving himself mad: the plan here was just to frustrate Di Luna, not to send himself over the edge as this might.

“Whatever you want,” Di Luna gasped, rocking against him. Ferrando held his hips still so that Di Luna was only getting as much as Ferrando was giving him, and couldn’t control what Ferrando was doing without Ferrando removing his hands to allow him to start moving again. “Please, I’m…” He moaned as Ferrando ran his thumb and forefinger together over the nub between Di Luna’s thighs.

“Then… I want you to ride me,” Ferrando said, sliding one hand under Di Luna’s hips. He was still alternately rubbing and stroking Di Luna, because he wanted Di Luna to feel all of this as intensely as he possibly could, and he knew just how sensitive Di Luna was. “Then, once I come inside you…” He leaned down close enough that he was nearly kissing Di Luna. “Then I’ll focus only on you.” He was already only thinking about Di Luna, but he was sure that he could play that off, because Di Luna could clearly barely think.

“Mmh.” Di Luna pushed Ferrando’s hand away in a way that made Ferrando think that he had probably got him so close that he would have just given into it in a few more seconds. “God. Yes.” Di Luna was still holding onto Ferrando’s wrist, but Ferrando moved to wrap both arms around him. “Stay inside me,” he mumbled, kissing Ferrando as he spoke. “Please. I don’t want you to…”

Ferrando did as he was told, stopping moving for just long enough to move one hand to Di Luna’s lower back while the other remained beneath his shoulders. Di Luna wrapped his arms around Ferrando’s neck as Ferrando carefully flipped them over so that he was sat with his back against the headboard of the bed as Di Luna had been a couple of minutes ago. Di Luna was more in control now that he was knelt on top of Ferrando, which had been part of his intention. The major reason for his having done this, though, was that Ferrando’s cock was even more deeply inside of him.

Di Luna waited for a few more seconds before he started to move against Ferrando, because he knew that as soon as he started he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from moaning, because even when they weren’t moving yet, Ferrando felt good. He would just want even more the longer he kept himself back, but he also didn’t want to hold things up for Ferrando for too long; he could tell from his expression that Ferrando wanted to start moving but he wasn’t going to just yet and was instead waiting for Di Luna.

Di Luna couldn’t keep himself quiet as he started moving slowly back and forth, but nor could Ferrando. His head fell back against the headboard, and Di Luna reached to grab for Ferrando’s hands. He was too close to keep going with Ferrando’s cock and fingers at the same time, and he didn’t want Ferrando to accidentally finish him off first. He had never had somebody want to use their mouth on him, partly because of how few partners he had had, and God, he wanted Ferrando to do that to him again. Even thinking about the idea made him moan.

When Di Luna finally let go of Ferrando’s hands, Ferrando moved his hands to Di Luna’s upper thighs, spreading his legs open a little wider in a way that made it so much more intense for both of them. Di Luna gasped loudly at the sensation, knowing that he was going to be unable to keep himself from finishing for much longer, and also knowing that he didn’t want to. As much as he wanted Ferrando to finish him with his mouth, this felt so good, and…

He reached his hand down and began kissing Ferrando again as he rubbed himself with his thumb and forefinger in time with his thrusts. Ferrando moaned against his mouth, beginning to move his hips up against Di Luna’s as they moved together. He could tell that Ferrando was getting closer, and Di Luna suddenly thought that they would probably finish together, at the same time. He was moaning into Ferrando’s mouth now, and Ferrando had both hands resting on the sides of Di Luna’s face.

Di Luna pulled away from the kiss suddenly. “Ferrando, I…” He gasped and pushed himself tighter against Ferrando’s body as he continued to ride him. “I’m so close…” He buried his face in Ferrando’s shoulder, and as he did, Ferrando pushed Di Luna’s hand away from him. He began stroking him with his thumb and forefinger in a way that made Di Luna’s legs shake. He wasn’t moving quite as hard on top of Ferrando now, his forehead pressed against Ferrando’s shoulder as Ferrando kept thrusting up into him. He wanted more, even though he had thought that what he needed was to have Ferrando finish him with his mouth.

Ferrando lifted Di Luna’s head to start kissing him again as he stroked him, and Di Luna could feel that he wasn’t going to last much longer. He went to guide Ferrando’s hand, but Ferrando stopped him before he could, holding onto Di Luna’s wrist. “God.” Ferrando pulled away from Di Luna’s mouth for just a second. “You’re…” He tightened his hand around Di Luna’s wrist. “I want you to finish for me.” He kissed Di Luna, and Di Luna bit down on his lip to keep from moaning even louder. “Please.” Di Luna didn’t need much more encouragement, and Ferrando was so good at this. He leaned forward so that he could bury his face in Ferrando’s shoulder even though he wanted to keep kissing him, and rocked back and forward on top of him even as Ferrando continued to thrust in and out of him.

Ferrando was probably close too, but all Di Luna could think of was how much he needed it. He twisted his wrist free from Ferrando’s hand even though he didn’t dislike the fact that Ferrando was restraining him, stood up on his knees so that Ferrando could take him as deeply as he could, and spread himself open around his own fingers. Ferrando’s fingers slid deeper inside and tighter and harder around him, and that was what it took for him. Di Luna grabbed at Ferrando’s shoulders and cried out inelegantly and tensed up around Ferrando as they both came together. Even though Di Luna could feel that Ferrando had finished inside of him and he was sure that Ferrando could feel that he had come as well, Ferrando kept thrusting up into him and stroking him with his fingers for a few seconds longer until Di Luna relaxed and fell back onto his knees.

As soon as Di Luna sat back down onto his knees, still on top of Ferrando, Ferrando started kissing him again. Di Luna made a sound against Ferrando’s lips when Ferrando pulled his fingers away. At first he wasn’t really thinking about the fact that Ferrando was still inside of him until the sensation became uncomfortable, and he pulled away from Ferrando, putting his hands on his shoulders and climbing off from his lap.


	7. CHAPTER SIX

Di Luna would have liked to go straight to sleep after he and Ferrando finished, given that it was late at night and he had had a very strange couple of days, but he was aware that now that they were done he was unpleasantly sticky and would probably not want to move even an inch to clean up again in the morning. At the same time, he didn’t want Ferrando to use him being gone when he went to have a bath as an excuse to take over the whole bed, because he was sure that he would have ulterior motives. He also liked the idea of taking a bath with another person (or he would have if he wasn’t too exhausted to think about much other than how much he wanted to go to sleep), so dragging a less-than-willing Ferrando off to take a bath with him was the obvious conclusion for him to come to.

For obvious reasons, Di Luna had always avoided public baths. For one thing, because he was a noble, he was able to bathe on his own in private, which he was more than happy to do, but he also hated the idea of allowing other people to see what he looked like without a binder on, especially if those people were, like most men were, larger than him. He found now that he didn’t really mind Ferrando seeing him without his binder on, mostly because he had just allowed Ferrando to be inside of him so it seemed like shutting the stable door long after the horse had bolted to suddenly be bothered by the idea of being completely naked around him.

Also, since they would just be using the bath in Di Luna’s quarters, it wasn’t like there was anybody else around who he might object to seeing him undressed. All this together, combined with the fact that the water was exactly the right sort of warm and so was Ferrando, Di Luna ended up nearly falling asleep in the water. He had gone in a few seconds from sitting and washing his hair to being pulled into Ferrando’s lap as he sat in the water. From there, it just seemed like a natural progression for him to slump against Ferrando’s chest, because Ferrando was already holding him, and he was already very comfortable.

“If you’re falling asleep we could go to bed,” Ferrando pointed out, but his tone suggested that he didn’t mind still being in the bath. “I don’t want to have to save you if you sink and start drowning.”

“What, in…?” Di Luna trailed off rather than finishing what he was saying, and he slapped the water to indicate that it wasn’t particularly deep, because he couldn’t be bothered to say it out loud. “It’s your own fault, anyway,” he joked.

“Hm?” Ferrando’s hand began to slide up Di Luna’s thigh under the water, although he was still petting Di Luna’s hair with his other hand. Di Luna moved to make it easier for him, partly because he liked the attention but also partly because he could probably have gone again by now, if they did it very slowly in the water and Ferrando didn’t mind Di Luna falling asleep as soon as he was finished. (Ferrando would also have to not mind the fact that he wouldn’t also get to go again. This was the one thing that made Di Luna glad that he had transitioned and not been born male, as much as it made him sad sometimes.)

“Well, you had me doing all the work,” he pointed out, leaning over to kiss Ferrando again. Unfortunately, he was at an angle where this would have required more effort than Di Luna wanted to expend, and would also probably have resulted in Ferrando having to put his hand somewhere usually covered by Di Luna’s binder, which was fully off-limits, even to somebody who had just been inside of him. Also, it would have involved twisting around in a way that would have pulled uncomfortably on the scar low down on his stomach. “I won’t be able to walk tomorrow, you know?” He left it open as to whether this was because he had been riding Ferrando or because he was particularly big, but the actual answer was a combination of both.

He was very glad for the surgery that had resulted in the scar on his belly: now that he knew that he and Ferrando were certainly attracted to each other he wanted to be able to have sex spontaneously without having to worry about getting pregnant as a result of it, and he wasn’t sure that he would trust Ferrando to be responsible for that. Yes, he was older, but he had never been with somebody who would have been able to get pregnant if he finished inside of them, while Di Luna would have been able to if he hadn’t had a hysterectomy. The fact that he had had to have his uterus removed to make sure that he definitely couldn’t get pregnant by having sex with Ferrando felt like a bit of an overreaction, especially when things like sheathes existed, but it also solved a number of problems besides just the potential of pregnancy.

He also would have liked to have had his breasts removed. That felt like it would be less of a problem to recover from than the hysterectomy, and he had heard about women having it done when he had been reading, but before he would have felt uncomfortable asking somebody to take care of him as he recovered. He thought now that Ferrando would have been willing to look after him, but he was also far too tired to broach the subject, and he didn’t want to make Ferrando uncomfortable at this stage.

Ferrando was still absently stroking Di Luna’s hair in a way that threatened to make Di Luna either jump on him again or fall asleep (or both, in very quick succession). The fact that the water was getting cold because they had been in the bath for about half an hour, on the other hand, was very much helping Di Luna to keep himself awake and not start with Ferrando again so soon after they had been together. For one thing, Di Luna was nearly always too cold, regardless of what he was doing, but he couldn’t stand being cold and wet, especially if he was wet because he was in water, even if he could use Ferrando for warmth as he was doing. Also, there was absolutely nothing arousing about being in cold water: it was just frustrating, rather than being enjoyable.

Their contrasting opinions on the cold was just another reason that he and Leonora could never have been together. Yes, Di Luna did like her as a friend, even if he had realised by now that he had never been in love with her, but she also wanted nothing to do with any sort of warmth. Di Luna, on the other hand, would complain about being freezing in September, when most people were only too happy to wander around outside during September.

“You’re falling asleep,” Ferrando said, which was stating the obvious a little bit. Di Luna’s head was falling against Ferrando’s chest and his eyes were half closed even though he was definitely getting too cold to be in a good mood by now, but Di Luna was glad to know that Ferrando at least cared enough to notice. “I still don’t want you to drown in a bath. Come on.” Ferrando gave Di Luna a gentle prod in the side to persuade him out of the bath.

Di Luna was definitely cold and wanted to be in an actual bed to sleep (he had fallen asleep in a bath before, and he had not been pleased when he had woken up so chilled that he could barely move), so he couldn’t argue. As soon as he was out of the bath, and certainly before Ferrando had a chance to turn around once he had finished rinsing his hair and getting out of the bath too, Di Luna had wrapped a towel around himself. It was definitely far too cold for him outside of the bath, but at least he would be in bed soon, and Ferrando was extremely warm and good to hold onto.

Di Luna had inherited much of his father’s personality, and also his appearance - he had been a very short man, while his mother had been tall and elegant - and that extended to his hair. Di Luna couldn’t even remember a time when at least most of his father’s hair hadn’t been gray, and most of the time when they were both alive he had had entirely white hair. Di Luna’s had started turning white (or rather silver) when he had been around eighteen years old, although it had previously been dark like his mother’s (her hair had never turned grey even though she had been a few years older than her husband, and probably a more stressful life). By the time he had been around twenty-two he had had completely silver hair, and that had stuck since then.

Ferrando’s hair, on the other hand, had stayed more or less entirely black: Di Luna hadn’t noticed that there was some white hair around his temples until he had been literally completely on top of him, which he supposed was impressive considering the contrast. If Di Luna hadn’t known that as soon as Ferrando got up tomorrow his hair would be sticking up in every possible direction while Di Luna would be able to comb his through with his fingers and then be completely fine and presentable then he would have been jealous. In fact, Ferrando still looked a little disheveled now, even after he had washed his hair, but Di Luna supposed that he had been pulling on it a little (or a lot), while Ferrando had been far more gentle with his hair.

Di Luna didn’t know how he was still awake when he had been getting out of the bath, and that was only accentuated when he and Ferrando actually got into bed. There was a bit of rearranging of the bedding involved, and Di Luna ended up just tossing the pillow he had been lying on while Ferrando had been on top of him on the floor because there was no way he thought that could be salvageable, and he also couldn’t be bothered to try at around one in the morning. But when the two of them were in bed (and Di Luna had pulled the curtains that were attached to the bed around, partly for warmth but partly so that if any servants came in in the morning they wouldn’t see anything untoward), Di Luna was still surprisingly awake.

Di Luna was happy just to lie with Ferrando, even if he suddenly couldn’t sleep because he just wanted Ferrando to continue to pay attention to him. It seemed as though Ferrando was happy to do the same thing; he was absently petting Di Luna’s hair where he was lying behind Di Luna, who still had no interest in the idea of Ferrando being able to touch or even see his chest. (This was definitely going to become a problem, but Di Luna couldn’t be bothered to deal with it for now, or at least for as long as Ferrando could keep his hands lower than Di Luna’s chest. Fortunately, Ferrando had been extremely accommodating so far, so Di Luna couldn’t fault him.)

Di Luna was fairly sure that Ferrando had fallen asleep, based on the way that he could feel that Ferrando had stopped petting his hair and his breath had slowed down, but he still couldn’t sleep. Yes, he had just done this, and he couldn’t say anything negative about the experience, and of course Leonora had been supporting him in this (and she had even been practically more enthusiastic about the whole business than Di Luna had been), but he still knew that he would have to face the rest of the noblemen of Aragon. He had had a hard time convincing them to see him as male, which had required considerable help from Ferrando, and even though Di Luna knew that Ferrando was only interested in men and therefore had to see him as male if he was attracted to him, he was sure that this would only cause trouble with his fellow noblemen.

Still. He didn’t care about them, and even if it wasn’t this they would no doubt have a problem with the fact that Di Luna so vastly outranked Ferrando. There was always something with these noblemen, and Di Luna couldn’t really be bothered to try to argue his case with them because he had no doubt that as soon as he had managed to bring them around to his way of thinking about one thing they would find a million other things to complain about. He would have preferred just to have Ferrando, and not be talked to by the. other nobles. It wasn’t as though he was particularly attached to them, and he couldn’t imagine they would understand. (It sounded childish now that he thought it, but that couldn’t be helped. He hadn’t had much of a childhood so to speak of.)

Fortunately, Ferrando made for a good pillow, which became particularly evident the next morning when Di Luna woke up lying on top of Ferrando. He usually slept lying on his stomach, partly because it was more comfortable but partly because if he slept without wearing a shirt as he had done last night it meant that it would be easier to just forget what he actually looked like, but this was taking that to a new extreme. Still, Ferrando was warm and comfortable to lie on, and he either hadn’t noticed that Di Luna was on top of him or just didn’t mind.

It was probably the case that Ferrando probably had noticed but he just didn’t mind: he had one arm around Di Luna’s waist while Di Luna had one arm up across Ferrando’s shoulder, his hand against the side of Ferrando’s head. Ferrando still appeared to be asleep, but at the same time Di Luna didn’t actually want to wake him up. Ferrando didn’t sleep as much as he should have, and nor did Di Luna, so if he had the opportunity to stay in bed and keep Ferrando in bed too, Di Luna was only too happy to take the opportunity.

He rolled off of Ferrando, though, because he didn’t want to accidentally make it difficult for Ferrando to breathe while he was asleep, and also lying on top of him was a little uncomfortable for Di Luna, because while he was fairly flat-chested from years of wearing a chest binder, lying on his front on top of another person wasn’t wholly comfortable. Yes, he was enjoying the attention, but he would also have preferred for his chest not to have been sore in service of it. Instead, he buried his face in Ferrando’s shoulder and curled back up on his side again to go back to sleep. They would have to tell Leonora what had happened, or at least Di Luna probably would, but he didn’t mind waiting a few more hours until he had to deal with whatever questions she would have to ask.

The next time Di Luna woke up, it was because Ferrando had also woken up. Di Luna had always been a terribly light sleeper, which he was sure would make him a terrible bedfellow in the future, but for now, Ferrando would have to deal with that. As it was, the fact that Ferrando had sat up was what had woken Di Luna up, even though Ferrando had clearly tried not to wake him when he had woken up. Di Luna didn’t really feel like moving, partly because he was a little sore from the previous night, as he had expected, but also because he was particularly comfortable and he didn’t really want to sit up. Now that it was properly the morning and he and Ferrando were both awake, he was beginning to regret not putting on a shirt.

Fortunately Ferrando was well in tune with what Di Luna was thinking, probably because he was only capable of thinking one or two things, so when he saw how Di Luna looked, because he supposed he must have looked as though he was feeling a little uncomfortable, Ferrando leaned down to grab one of the two shirts that they had left near the bed. They could probably have cleaned them up before they went to sleep, considering that they had had time to take a bath together and talk for a while after they had got out of the bath, but Di Luna was glad now that they hadn’t.

“We should tell Leonora,” Di Luna said, as he was putting the shirt back on. He thought it was the one that Ferrando had been wearing the previous day, not that this had much of an effect because they were both Ferrando’s shirts, but this one smelled like him.

Ferrando had picked up the other shirt as well now, but he hadn’t put it on yet, and was sitting and holding it. “I think she’ll know, Fadrique.” Ferrando tapped his fingers against Di Luna’s neck, which even felt bruised so he couldn’t imagine how it looked. Di Luna laughed, and leaned over to kiss Ferrando. “But if you’re so desperate to tell her, don’t let me stop you.”

“Don’t you want to tell her?” Di Luna asked.

“I don’t think she would be… pleased to know that I just slept with her husband,” Ferrando pointed out.

Di Luna shrugged. “She was as keen that I sleep with you as I was,” he said. “I don’t think she’ll mind. In fact, I imagine she’ll be glad just to get rid of me.”

“I expect it’ll be different for her now that she knows that we really have slept together,” Ferrando said. Di Luna made a face. “I’d rather not antagonise her.”

“And you don’t much like her,” Di Luna said.

Ferrando seemed to concede that, but Di Luna wasn’t going to push him into something that he didn’t want to do. He had plenty of time to get Ferrando to do things that he might not otherwise do, so he didn’t need to insist on Ferrando’s making good with Leonora right now. He liked Leonora as a friend, and they had established that she certainly wasn’t attracted to him whatever Ferrando thought might be going on in her mind, not that Di Luna would ever try to understand what she was thinking about. For the time being he could deal with the fact that she and Ferrando probably could be friends at a later date when he and Ferrando were better established as a couple. As it was this was the first proper day of their relationship, so Di Luna could deal with talking to Leonora for himself.

For now, Di Luna wanted to stay in bed, and not have a conversation with Leonora just yet.

“Leonora probably won’t be awake yet,” Di Luna said. This was not true, and he knew it, and he knew that Ferrando also knew it. But even though he and Ferrando both knew that Leonora was a complete morning person, neither of them was going to argue with the fact that Di Luna wanted to stay in bed and just be with Ferrando - partly because Di Luna was sure that Ferrando wanted to stay in bed with him too. Neither of them had had a full night of sleep in God only knew how long, and even though neither of them had actually been asleep until well after two in the morning, it was probably around nine or ten now and Di Luna had only just woken up, which meant that Ferrando had probably also only just woken up.

Di Luna was still just sat up in bed rather than letting Ferrando drag him out of bed, because Ferrando was far more of a morning person than he was and would probably have got Di Luna out of bed if he could. Before he could give Ferrando the chance, Di Luna slumped over against him with his head resting on Ferrando’s shoulder. They had slept together, and now Di Luna wanted affection, not that this was unusual for him: he had been needy with Leonora, which he had thought that she probably didn’t like, but it seemed as though Ferrando would be more content with that than Leonora was.

Indeed Ferrando was happy to give Di Luna the attention that he needed. As soon as Di Luna leaned into him, Ferrando put his arms around Di Luna’s waist and cuddled up to him, allowing Di Luna to sit on his lap. Di Luna had thought that he would wake up and immediately want to go again if and when he and Ferrando finally had sex, but it seemed now that he just wanted Di Luna to start fussing over him like he was now.

“Are you going to get up any time soon?” Ferrando’s voice was very close to his ear, and Di Luna hoped that he might lean down a little and bite him again. Instead, Ferrando started stroking Di Luna’s hair again, which he supposed also worked. “Or are we going to stay here.”

“I’d say I was going to get up…” Di Luna’s eyes were half closed as he laid back against Ferrando’s side, and not just because Ferrando stroking his hair was about to send him back to sleep again (although that was a significant contributor). “But…” He laughed.

“Too lazy?” Ferrando teased him. He pulled Di Luna in closer against him with the arm around his waist. “Well, I won’t make you get up.” There was a slightly smug air to his voice, which made Di Luna imagine that he was thinking ‘because you’re probably a little sore after last night, aren’t you?’ Yes, he was sore, but he also wasn’t going to give Ferrando the satisfaction of knowing that. Also it was his fault for the most part; yes it had been particularly good but also he certainly hadn’t needed to be that rough.

“Too much to catch up on,” Di Luna corrected him. He certainly wasn’t going to admit to Ferrando that he didn’t really want to start walking around so soon, because he certainly was aching at least a little bit after their activities the previous night, but this also gave him an excuse that he was more than glad of. He turned around and stood up on his knees at the same time, putting his hands either side of Ferrando’s face and kissing him. Ferrando seemed only too willing to accept the fact that Di Luna wanted this, and put his hands on Di Luna’s hips, sliding his fingers up under his shirt. Di Luna was slightly tempted to guide Ferrando’s hands somewhere else entirely, but he also truly did want to do something nice with Ferrando. (Of course, if it evolved into something more, then Di Luna certainly wasn’t going to argue with that.)

“Do you want me to…?” Ferrando pulled away only for long enough to say this, and then immediately went back to kissing Di Luna’s neck to allow him to answer.

“Well…” Di Luna wound the fingers of one hand through Ferrando’s hair. “You could certainly do with the practice,” he said. Ferrando laughed against his neck. “And…”

“And I owe you,” Ferrando said, lifting his head from against Di Luna’s neck. Di Luna wouldn’t have minded if Ferrando had just kept kissing him and started touching him again without replying, but this was fine too. “Since you wanted me to—”

“I know what I wanted you to do,” Di Luna said, pulling himself closer against Ferrando’s side in a way that he hoped would make what he wanted Ferrando to do now as clear as he could without saying it out loud, “but I was certainly open to changing my mind.”

“Or having your mind changed.” Ferrando was beginning to look a little glazed over, in exactly the same way as he had last night when Di Luna had started kissing him. Good. As much as he felt strange about it, Di Luna very much enjoyed the fact that he could exert this level of control over Ferrando, who tried to portray himself as being completely untouchable. Well, he clearly hadn’t been untouchable last night, but if even talking to him like this was enough to provoke this much of a reaction then there was no way he could really have been what he played himself off as. Di Luna loved the fact that he was the only person who was allowed to see this side of Ferrando

Di Luna leaned into him, making sure that his knee was pressed up against Ferrando’s inner thigh in a way that was calculated to turn him on. It had been easy to figure out which head Ferrando thought with, even though Di Luna had assumed that that would stop being the case by the time a man got to about forty, and he would then start thinking with neither, from what Di Luna had observed from both himself and other men. Then again, he had known men well into their sixties, even their seventies if they were still physically able, to father children. It was mostly nobles, whose wives had died and who had then married pretty young ladies who could still have children, and suddenly there had been heirs young enough to be their half-siblings’ parents. Di Luna thought it was strange, and more than a little disgusting, considering that generally these geriatric men were married to women young enough to be their children, or even their grandchildren in some cases. But still, he supposed that it made sense that Ferrando would still be extremely sensitive to being touched there if he was half the age of some of the men that Di Luna had seen to father children.

It made it far easier for Di Luna to get what he wanted out of Ferrando too, or at least Di Luna hoped that it would, because he wasn’t really that keen to talk to Leonora yet, and if last night was anything to go by as an indicator, he would be able to buy himself at least an hour, maybe even too if he got Ferrando sufficiently worked up. “That too,” Di Luna said. He put his hand over Ferrando’s in the hopes that this would be enough of a hint, and was very pleased when Ferrando’s hand slid up over his thigh. “You might… you might be able to change my mind about needing to go and talk to Leonora right now, too,” he said, his voice a little muffled by Ferrando’s mouth against his. “Certainly if you keep doing that.”

Ferrando laughed and pulled his hands away from Di Luna, even though he must have known that it would frustrate him. When Di Luna grumbled into his mouth, Ferrando said, “I thought you were the one who was keen to tell her, not me.” He put his hands on Di Luna’s waist, pulling him in to kiss him again. “Go and tell Leonora,” he said.

Di Luna went to get up, intending to make Ferrando regret stopping him for what would probably turn into at least half an hour of conversation, knowing Leonora, but Ferrando pulled him back down into his arms again. Di Luna settled against him, leaning in to kiss Ferrando’s neck, and to move down his shoulders to his chest. Maybe he was having too much fun with this, but also the fact that Ferrando reacted to everything Di Luna did so readily was more entertaining than Di Luna perhaps ought to have found it.

“Go and tell Leonora,” Ferrando clarified, gently pulling Di Luna away from him, “and we can carry on again when you get back.”

* * *

It didn’t need stating that, as soon as he was dressed and he had left Ferrando alone in his bedchamber, Di Luna was in a tearing hurry to talk to Leonora, fully explain what he and Ferrando had talked about even if he didn’t give her the full details of their activities the previous night, and then get back and spend the rest of the day distracting and being distracted by Ferrando. There wasn’t much that he needed to do for the next while - it was spring so crops were being sown and he had nothing to do with that, and the civil war had mostly fizzled out, so he hoped that nobody would mind if he ignored his duties for at least just a little while. He had done a lot of late, but there was plenty of slacking off that he would rather have been doing.

The fact of it was that, even though he seemed to do very little for the most part, and while he tried to delegate as far as he could he was not keen to allow others to do his work for him. He had spent most of his life, from when he was twelve to when he was about twenty-one, at which point he (or rather Ferrando) had finally convinced the other Lords of Aragon to leave him alone to rule his own land, and Di Luna was not in any mood to abdicate responsibility. Being that he was technically part of the King of Aragon’s household, even though he was a noble in his own right, this allowed him a great deal more control over his land and therefore a great deal more knowledge of what the people who were tenants there were getting up to than many nobles.

This, like many other things Di Luna knew, was a trick that his father had taught him before he had died.

While most nobles certainly knew that they had land, and that people lived on that land because they collected the taxes and a portion of the crops that came from their land, they mostly left the running of their estates to other people. Di Luna’s father had considered this to be a mistake, both because it allowed for resentment to form amongst the people who worked the land, which could very well lead to uprisings, and also because it could possibly prevent the Count from finding out until far too late that there was something wrong. Things like disease outbreaks or failures of crops were easily missed, Di Luna’s father had explained.

Count Martin had been careful to explain all that he did in the running of his County and the City of Segorb, because even when Di Luna had been a “daughter”, he had been very keen that his child should learn how to run the land, because the man he was married off to probably wouldn’t have been competent, “and,” Martin had said when Di Luna, then aged about nine, had asked why he even needed to know any of this, “if push comes to shove you want the commoners on your side. Better to lead an uprising against an abusive bastard than to let yourself be subjugated when you’re as much a noble as him.”

Di Luna had liked that at the time, and he still liked it now. His father might not have instinctively “known” how he would turn out, and if he had lived to see Di Luna transition he might not even have approved, even though he had been an open-minded man, but clearly there had been something about him that had let his father know that he deserved to be told how to be a good liege-lord. He hoped now that those lessons had stuck with him and that his father would approve of his actions now. Or at least that he would approve of his actions here, where his estates were concerned. He couldn’t imagine that even Count Martin would have wanted his son to be in love with another man, even if he could hypothetically have approved of Di Luna’s transitioning.

It was lucky only this once that Leonora was a morning person. Di Luna had found it utterly infuriating all through their marriage, because she had sometimes slept in the same bed as him even though she had her own rooms, and then when she woke at the crack of dawn, no matter how quiet she tried to be she would still wake him up, and then he would be moody all day. Today, however, Di Luna was very glad of the fact that Leonora rose early, because he wanted to talk to somebody about what had just happened, and he didn’t feel like explaining the context and all that had happened previously before getting into the interesting details of his exploits the previous night.

As Di Luna had expected, Leonora was up and awake when he reached her rooms. He was glad not to have to announce himself, because she was coming out just as he approached. He and Leonora had discussed that he didn’t actually have to announce himself, since they were married, but Di Luna still didn’t actually like to encroach. Even when he had been trying to court her, however unsuccessful he had been there, he had never actually gone to her rooms, even though that might have been a better idea than standing outside her window, but hindsight was a fine thing. Anyway, it meant that, in return, Leonora wouldn’t come to his rooms unannounced, so they could both rely on the other to leave them alone for the most part rather than having to worry about (in Leonora’s case) being decently dressed to receive visitors, or, in Di Luna’s case, whether or not he had a chest binder on at all hours of the day.

Fortunately, Leonora didn’t mind having to wait an extra couple of minutes if Di Luna happened not to be as fully dressed as he would have liked to be, even though really it wasn’t even too obvious whether he was wearing anything to flatten down his chest, especially if he was wearing one of Ferrando’s shirts as he was now. Di Luna was fairly flat-chested to begin with so it wouldn’t be obvious to an outside observer, but he would know and he couldn’t focus properly because he just felt uncomfortable if he wasn’t wearing a binder, as strange as it sounded.

Di Luna was just glad that Ines wasn’t also there, because for one thing she didn’t actually like Di Luna that much, from what he had gathered, but she would also certainly have a lot to say about the fact that there were bruises all the way up and down Di Luna’s neck. He hadn’t looked in a mirror before he left his rooms, but he was sure that he also looked at least a little rough, and he was also sure that Ines would have plenty to say about that, and he was sure that none of it would be things that Di Luna wanted to hear her say. He could also live without having a conversation with her generally; she was good friends with Leonora, and had been very disapproving all through his attempt to court her. He was best just avoiding her.

“You didn’t come to talk to me last night,” Leonora said, before even greeting Di Luna, when she saw him. He must have looked rougher than he thought he did, because she was looking at him in a very strange way that he wasn’t sure he appreciated. “Don’t worry, though,” she continued. “I didn’t stay up waiting for you.”

“Good,” Di Luna said. He allowed Leonora to drag him back into her rooms so that they could carry on their conversation without being overheard. “Because I really wasn’t thinking about what you might be hoping for at any point last night.” That might have come across at rude, or at least it might have to anybody else, but he could tell that Leonora was extremely glad that her feelings hadn’t been considered at any point in proceedings. Di Luna allowed himself to be shoved into one of Leonora’s antechambers, because after last night he still wasn’t able to think enough to actually pilot his own body properly.

“So.” Leonora sat down on one of the couches in the room, and Di Luna sat down cross-legged beside her. Leonora made an interesting sound in response, but Di Luna didn’t have the time or the inclination to try to figure out what had amused her so much. (He could guess, anyway. It was a little awkward for Di Luna to sit down properly at the moment, which he hoped Leonora wouldn’t comment on, because he was sure that it would be obviously to Leonora. She had had a physical relationship with Manrico before she had married Di Luna, so she could probably figure out what had happened.) “I thought something bad might have happened when I saw you last night, actually,” Leonora admitted.

“Really?” Di Luna thought it had been pretty obvious what direction his conversation with Ferrando had gone in the previous night when they had returned from the moors, but maybe it hadn’t actually been that clear. At least he could set Leonora right on that matter now, because he now had confirmation that Leonora had been right about everything all along. “No,” he said. “Nothing was wrong last night… just… at all.” He laughed.

“Good.” Leonora didn’t look relieved by what he had just told her, exactly, but she did look pleased with it. Di Luna thought that she had probably put some money on whether he and Ferrando would end up together, because the look on her face suggested that she was now going to be a lot richer, or at least she would next time she saw (he assumed) Ines. Di Luna couldn’t argue, since she had been the one who had made him realise that he was in love with Ferrando, so he didn’t like to say anything unkind about it, especially since she hadn’t wanted to be married to him in the first place. “I suppose I probably should have known, though,” she said.

“What? Why?” Di Luna wasn’t sure what she had noticed, but he was sure of the fact that she had noticed it, and that he didn’t care for the tone in which she pointed it out. Surely, his and Leonora’s rooms were far enough away from each other than she hadn’t heard anything, or at least he hoped that she hadn’t heard anything, because that would be exactly the wrong sort of embarrassing. Not that it hadn’t been enjoyable, of course, and not that he hadn’t known that Leonora would have things to say about it, but he would have preferred if he had been able to keep the precise details of what he and Ferrando had been doing as private as he could.

“You don’t look that tired - or that sort of tired - if you haven’t had a very interesting night,” Leonora joked. Di Luna was about to protest, when she added, “oh, also, you have bruises all over your neck.”

“And I went out into the woods,” Di Luna replied, before realising how that would sound to Leonora. “Anything could have happened to me out there.”

“Clearly,” Leonora laughed, and at that point Di Luna realised what he had accidentally implied that he had done.

He was definitely going to go and jump directly back into bed with Ferrando as soon as he and Leonora finished talking, just so that he could forget how embarrassing this whole exchange had been. He hadn’t been able to think much last night, so hopefully he also wouldn’t be able to remember how stupid he was being now if he went and repeated that. Ferrando had clearly been as keen that they should do that again when he had left, and Ferrando also clearly hadn’t been able to keep his hands off Di Luna, which Di Luna loved. He couldn’t imagine that Ferrando wouldn’t be willing to go again as soon as Di Luna returned and suggested (or “suggested”) that they do so.

“The problem is,” Di Luna said, although he was thinking out loud now, “that I can’t actually divorce or separate from you in the eyes of the church, because we already…” He trailed off, because he wasn’t sure if he actually was unable to divorce. If they couldn’t produce an heir then Di Luna supposed it would make sense if they could legally divorce, but they had had sex at least once. Considering what that had entailed, he supposed that an effort had been made. Since he also couldn’t have children with Ferrando, though, because he had deliberately taken away his own ability to have children (and he was glad of that), all of the possible paths he could take her unclear.

Maybe it was best that they just stay where they were. Di Luna had heard just what the Church liked to do to prove that there was no way a marriage had been consummated, and he didn’t want that for either himself or Leonora. Since she already didn’t entirely like him - she tried to pretend that she did, but he wasn’t that stupid - he couldn’t see that trying to drag her through that experience would only end poorly for their relationship.

“It’s not like noblemen don’t have affairs,” Leonora told him. “That’s why I didn’t want to marry one in the first place.”

“But… this was your idea.”

“I didn’t think I would find myself married to somebody so obviously in love with another man,” she replied.

“It’s not like I’m not interested in women,” Di Luna corrected her, “but…”

“But you prefer Ferrando, I know,” Leonora said. Di Luna thought, based on her expression, that in trying to explain the concept of being able to be attracted to multiple genders he might have been telling her about something that she already had experience with. He didn’t want to pry, though, and she also looked like she had something more to say. “And I know about what you two have been up to.”

“I hope you don’t know too much,” Di Luna said.

“I don’t want to know too much, Fadrique,” she said. “In any case. It’s not a betrayal if I’m the one setting you up, and it’s not like there are going to be any bastard children to contest with my own children.”

That was probably a fair concern, but Di Luna also knew plenty about bastards, being that his father had been one. He had been the first Count Di Luna, the illegitimate son of the King Martin the Elder of Sicily, who had wanted his son legitimised but hadn’t been able to force it through before he had died (and the son had then died young too). It wasn’t actually that it was difficult to get a legitimate child recognised if they had an illegitimate half-sibling who was older than them, because Di Luna’s father had been the oldest and only child of Martin the Elder and the throne of Sicily had devolved to a cousin of the King’s. The problem, really, was the fact that it was so difficult to convince the Catholic Church to recognise a child as legitimate, even if they were the last of their line.

Di Luna had a lot of thoughts about this and a lot to say on the subject, because he felt that he possibly should have been the King of Sicily, rather than a Count as he was, not that this was any small fortune that he had here. However, he was quite sure that Leonora didn’t care about it, so he decided against lecturing her about it. He had probably talked to her about it in the past, anyway, and it had probably bored her silly, because they weren’t really interested in many of the same things, as much as Di Luna liked her. Ferrando was definitely a much better match for him, even if he was more sensible to an extent that it almost seemed like cruelty for him to have to put up with Di Luna.

“So…” Di Luna made a face.

“So I don’t see why we should divorce, if there’s nothing wrong with what we have at present.”

This was true, but something about it still felt wrong to Di Luna. “I could try to get myself excommunicated?” Di Luna suggested.

“I think I would prefer that you didn’t.”

That was fair: now that Di Luna thought about it, because he hadn’t thought about what he had said before he said it. This was nothing short of usual for Di Luna, but now that he actually was thinking about what he had suggested, his being excommunicated wouldn’t entail he and Leonora separating (or being forcibly separated) but it would involve her also being excommunicated, which she obviously wouldn’t want, and the fact that they would still be married wouldn’t actually solve the problem that he had decided that they had. He would have to rethink this, but for now he didn’t actually want to. If Leonora didn’t mind the fact that they were married, then there clearly wasn’t anything wrong with it. Di Luna was no stranger to overthinking, but he was also no stranger to just leaping into things without thinking: he didn’t have a concept of just a normal amount of thinking about what he was going to do.

“We don’t need to separate,” Leonora said. “I was thinking about it a while ago - nobles don’t—”

“Nobles don’t marry for love, I know,” Di Luna said. He had known that his mother and father weren’t in love, partly because he had also known his mother’s maid, although he had never been able to figure out if his father had a lover or if he was happier being unattached. Still, his parents had liked each other, even if they hadn’t liked each other in a sexual or even a romantic way, and the fact that he had thought that he was in love with Leonora before he married her, and had gone on professing this for the first month of their marriage just made him feel dirty, for want of a better word. It was almost as though he had mislead her, even if he had mislead her to somewhere that she wanted to be.  
“And if you and Ferrando are happy together,” Leonora said, “then I can’t begrudge you that.” She probably could, considering that Di Luna had practically forced her into this marriage by driving her lover away when she had said that she was going to be married to him instead of Di Luna, but he could appreciate how kind she was being to him, even if he hadn’t earned it. “Also…” Leonora laughed behind her hand. “It isn’t as though I’m not gaining anything from being married to you.”

“Oh?” Di Luna hadn’t thought that she even could have gained anything from this relationship, so he was interested to hear what she could come up with.

“You have a reputation,” Leonora said. “Now that I’m married to you, the soldiers don’t leer at me.” That was fair, but Di Luna couldn’t see why he had attracted a reputation of this sort. Still, he wasn’t going to argue with it, because it almost felt like a compliment. “And the other noblemen are far, far more polite to me.” Di Luna supposed that it would figure that the noblemen would be impolite to a noble lady who had fallen in love with somebody as ignoble as Manrico was. He couldn’t justify it, of course, but he understood it. He could also understand how much Leonora must have hated it.

That settled it for Di Luna. “If it means that we can both leave the other alone, but we’re also both safe from other people looking strangely at us…” Di Luna thought about it. “Well, I don’t see why we should separate.”

“No, Fadrique. That’s what I’ve been trying to get through to you all along.” Leonora didn’t actually sound frustrated, just glad that he had managed to figure it out at last, but Di Luna was still a bit embarrassed by how blunt she was with him.

The main problem was that what she had been saying to him was true, but Di Luna didn’t know that he liked the idea of admitting that to either himself or to Leonora. Even if he was embarrassed about the fact that he had taken so long to realise something this simple, so he wasn’t going to admit to his mistakes, Di Luna felt a bit bad for how long it had taken him to get the point, but at least Leonora didn’t seem to mind that, or at least she hadn’t seemed to mind it too much. He had never been able to admit to his mistakes out loud, but the fact that he could admit to this one within his own mind was probably a good thing. Or at the least it was a start.

Di Luna would have been happy just to leave it at that and return to bed and, more importantly, to Ferrando, but he could tell that Leonora still had more to say to him. He was in a good enough mood that he wouldn’t have objected, but, at the same time, he truly just wanted to be with Ferrando now. He had joked about it before he had left, but he and Ferrando really did have a lot to catch up on, and that wasn’t just sexual things that they had been missing out on. Di Luna had spent nearly all of his life relying very heavily on Ferrando, because his father had died when he was young, so the fact that he had Ferrando had hardly spoken to each other for a month until yesterday, and until yesterday they had only spoken in order to argue, meant that there were plenty of things that Di Luna would ordinarily have spoken to Ferrando about that he just hadn’t had the opportunity to, because Ferrando wasn’t there.

Leonora, he was sure, would understand if he just wanted to leave, but he was sure that she also knew that he had far more important things to do be doing. If she actually wanted to stop him for longer to talk about something, then it must have been something important. Yes, Leonora could be annoying, but Di Luna knew that she also knew the value of time alone with a partner, since she had had so little of it with Manrico. (That was probably what she wanted to talk about, Di Luna suspected. Well, he could think about that later, if he needed to; Manrico was miles away and it wasn’t as though he had a way to contact him, since they were enemies.)

“Since you have Ferrando now,” Leonora said, “that essentially leaves me on my own.”

“You didn’t seem to want me to begin with,” Di Luna said. He was sure he knew where this was going, but he was also a little bit worried that he had accidentally hurt Leonora by rushing into this with Ferrando. Of course, he wasn’t going to say that just yet, because it probably wasn’t the case and he didn’t want to completely get the wrong end of the stick, but if it came to it he was sure that he would be able to find the words to say it. “But… I suppose it does,” Di Luna agreed.

“It does,” Leonora agreed. “And no, I was never in love with you, but…” She seemed to think about the right way to phrase what she was thinking. “But I did appreciate having the company.” Considering that it took her a few seconds to come up with that, it was rather a pathetic explanation of what she was thinking. On the other hand, Leonora was also far more intelligent than Di Luna so he supposed that he would just let her explain herself without trying to butt in.

Leonora still didn’t continue to explain what she wanted. Di Luna wasn’t sure why she had stopped dead when she seemed to know what she was thinking about, but in case it was because she was waiting for an answer, he said, “Go on?”

“Well…” Leonora made a face. “I know you didn’t want anything to do with it last time I asked, but I thought now that you and Ferrando are…” She didn’t know how to phrase what he and Ferrando actually were, but fortunately Di Luna wasn’t bashful about it. He didn’t see why he should be, especially since he had already slept with Leonora, so there wasn’t anything new there. “Well, now that you and Ferrando have sorted your differences, I hope you’ll like it more.”

“Manrico?” Di Luna asked.

Leonora nodded. “I know you don’t like him, but—”

“Well, the reason I don’t like him had… not everything, certainly, but a lot to do with the fact that I thought I was in love with you,” Di Luna explained. “But since I’m not…” And he was now actually getting what he needed from Ferrando, and really it wasn’t fair for Leonora not to get affection from somebody that she loved and who loved her, even if he didn’t like Manrico. “I don’t want him here,” he said, finally, “but if it’s something I can’t see happening, then I suppose I don’t know about it.” This seemed to be a fair compromise. Di Luna truly wouldn’t have objected either way, but he had to be seen at least to care about the fact that he had a wife and that she probably shouldn’t be having affairs, even if they had both agreed on the fact that they were going to do this.

“And Manrico’s mother?” Leonora asked.

That was a problem. Di Luna couldn’t actually blame Manrico for what his mother had done, because he had been a baby when it had happened, but he also very much could hold his mother accountable for her crimes, and also Ferrando might well have killed him if he had just let her in. It was, however, also a problem which could be dealt with later, because he and Leonora both had far more important things that they could be doing.

Since he and Leonora had decided what they were going to do, Di Luna went back to his own rooms to see Ferrando again. He felt guilty about the fact that he was essentially going to be lying about the presence of somebody that Ferrando resented in the palace, but he wanted Leonora to be happy too.


	8. CHAPTER SEVEN

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah, i know, i haven't updated this in ages. here's some more filth.

Fortunately for himself but also especially fortunately for Ferrando, Di Luna didn’t feel any overwhelming sense of cognitive dissonance about going straight from having a serious conversation with Leonora to jumping into bed with Ferrando again. Considering that what he had wanted to do in the first place was to be with Ferrando, he supposed that it was only right that he spend as little time as possible talking to Leonora about something that no longer really concerned him now that he had another relationship that he wanted to be in. Luckily for him, Leonora wasn’t too interested in what he did as long as Di Luna (and, by extension, Ferrando) left her well enough alone.

Ferrando seemed to have gone back to sleep when Di Luna returned to him and the bed, which was amusing considering how much time Ferrando had spent in the past complaining about Di Luna’s habits of sleeping during the day and being awake and active at night. Di Luna gave him a gentle nudge as he climbed back onto the bed next to him, but this was to no avail. Or rather, it appeared as though it was to no avail - as soon as Di Luna climbed back out of the bed to let Ferrando sleep for a bit longer, since he supposed he had probably tired him out last night, Ferrando pulled Di Luna over into his arms.

“You took your time,” Ferrando mumbled, his voice somewhat muffled by the fact that he had just been woken up and the fact that his face was half-buried in the pillow. He didn’t move to sit up, so Di Luna took that to mean that they weren’t going to be getting up any time soon. He laid down beside Ferrando instead, and let Ferrando move closer to him.

“I don’t think I was more than about ten minutes,” Di Luna said. “But I don’t know, maybe three minutes is a long time in your world,” he teased. It had certainly been about that long the first time, which Di Luna was still a little annoyed about. Yes, Di Luna could hypothetically finish himself off in that amount of time, but he hadn’t particularly liked having to do so without Ferrando putting any deliberate effort into it. But if he noticed that he was being jabbed at, Ferrando didn’t react to it.

Instead of doing anything else, Ferrando put his arms around Di Luna’s waist without giving Di Luna a chance to get up and undressed again. Di Luna had had ideas about putting on a show for Ferrando, as it were, while he was undressing, even if he didn’t take the chest binder off again as had happened last night, but he supposed that he wasn’t going to do that now. If Ferrando was still too tired to think properly then there wasn’t much point to trying to get Ferrando to do anything to him. Given that the first time they had been together had been more than just a little bit disappointing, Di Luna didn’t want to repeat that, because that would put them at above half the times they had slept together being disappointing.

Di Luna could live with waiting for a little longer to go again, if that was what he and Ferrando were going to do, because sleeping - actually sleeping - in the same bed as another person, and especially another person who actually loved him, was the best thing Di Luna had done recently. The fact that he was still dressed was perhaps a bit of a problem, but he wasn’t dressed formally. He had taken off his doublet when he had come into the room, because he had left the fire still burning so that it was warm enough for him and Ferrando to be able to sleep naked, so he was just wearing a shirt and hose now, with a chest binder under the shirt but that went without saying. Still, it was one of Ferrando’s shirts and not one of his, so it was both comfortable and large, and he could sleep in it just fine.

Ferrando was just wound around Di Luna for a few seconds, or maybe even a few minutes, lying behind him with his face buried in the back of Di Luna’s shoulder rather than the pillow now that Di Luna was back in bed with him, and Di Luna almost thought that he might have fallen asleep. Ferrando wasn’t a particularly deep sleeper, Di Luna knew, but he also didn’t actually want to wake him up. Ferrando had clearly been exhausted after they had finished and got in the bath together, and Di Luna had even thought he had seemed a little tired when they had been walking home from the woods, even though sleep was the furthest thing from either of their minds when that had happened.

Di Luna truly thought that Ferrando had fallen asleep again, and was considering going back to sleep himself, because even though he hadn’t thought that he was tired, the fact that he had laid down and stopped moving, and Ferrando was warm and putting pressure against his body in a way that for some reason made him extremely keen to go to sleep, when Ferrando began, very slowly, to move his hand down Di Luna’s stomach. Di Luna moved, pushing back against him to make it easier for Ferrando to do what he liked, because they had both suddenly gone from sleeping to if not actively about to start doing anything then certainly considering it.

“You thought I’d forgotten, didn’t you?” Ferrando said, against the side of Di Luna’s neck.

“I thought you might have,” Di Luna admitted. “I didn’t want you to have forgotten, though.”

Ferrando hadn’t dressed again after Di Luna had left. Di Luna’s best guess was that he had left and then Ferrando had just slumped back onto the bed in his absence, but this meant that not only could Di Luna feel Ferrando pressed against him, but he could also take control of this far more easily. The fact that he was dressed but Ferrando wasn’t certainly put him in a more dominant position than he had been in last night, even though the previous night, he had clearly been in control when Ferrando had thought that he might be.

Di Luna liked that. He had never actually wanted to be “in control” of a partner in bed, even with Leonora he had wanted to have things done to him, rather than to be the one doing, and to give her credit Leonora had been at least fairly accommodating of his wants, but he did like knowing that he could have this effect on Ferrando. Ferrando wasn’t actually too dominant, either; Di Luna had seen him try to pretend that he was to the soldiers, but he also deferred immediately and at times very meekly to Di Luna when he thought nobody else would notice it. Di Luna was fairly sure that it was something that Ferrando liked.

Now he was envisioning a schedule, which was not particularly attractive, though, so he quickly shook that thought out of his mind.

“It’s a good thing you didn’t forget, too,” Di Luna said, moving Ferrando’s hand so that it was no longer on his thigh under the covers. Ferrando pulled the covers back, immediately knowing where he wanted this to go, but Di Luna stopped him before he started undressing. “Because I seem to remember I didn’t quite get what I wanted last night.” Ferrando didn’t protest, just sitting back against the pillows with Di Luna knelt between his thighs. Neither one of them had touched the other just yet, Di Luna because he enjoyed making Ferrando hold back, and Ferrando because he was being well-behaved.

“I know, I—” Ferrando started to say something that would probably be an apology. Instead of letting him continue, Di Luna leaned in to kiss him in a way that he hoped would silence him. It did, because Ferrando put his hand on Di Luna’s cheek to keep him in against him and prolong it for as long as he could. As much as he would have liked to right now, Di Luna didn’t reach down to touch Ferrando. It would have been far too easy right now, and he also wanted not to finish Ferrando off immediately, which he was sure would happen if he started doing anything right now, because he could have fun with him for as long as he wanted to if he kept him hard for as long as possible.

Di Luna pulled away again, because things were getting far too heated to continue to burn for as long as either he or, he hoped, Ferrando would have liked all of a sudden. “It wasn’t that I didn’t like it, of course,” he said, “but…” He tipped his head to the side, as though unsure of what he wanted to say to Ferrando.

“But I was too good?” Ferrando said. His tone was so smug that Di Luna entirely broke character and laughed, burying his head in Ferrando’s shoulder. Since he was already clearly completely side-tracked, Di Luna reached his hand down to wrap around Ferrando properly. Since Di Luna had been acting like an idiot for the past few minutes, he supposed that it was the least he could do, and as he began to stroke Ferrando, slowly at first, his head moved up so that he could begin kissing Ferrando again. He would have been willing to accept no sex but just kissing for a little while, because really this was enjoyable enough without any other types of touching.

Ferrando, on the other hand, didn’t seem to be quite so willing to not immediately jump into having sex regularly. Fortunately, this was also Di Luna’s preference, so when Ferrando pulled Di Luna forward, as close to him as he could even though Di Luna was still dressed so really all that they were doing was allowing Ferrando to press against Di Luna without getting any real release from it, because Di Luna wouldn’t let him finish until he had finished as well. Still, it seemed that they were going to be quick about this, based on how Ferrando’s breath was shuddering as Di Luna stroked him, still moving slowly, and while Di Luna didn’t actually have anywhere to be, and nor did Ferrando, he was still keen to get started as quickly as he could.

It was obvious that Di Luna’s deliberate attempt to get him as turned on as he possibly could had had even more of an effect on Ferrando, though, because the second Di Luna pulled his hand away, Ferrando had pushed him onto his back so that Di Luna was lying with his head towards the foot of the bed. Di Luna supposed that he didn’t actually care if Ferrando saw him fully undressed, because now that Ferrando had been inside of him, it didn’t really seem like such a huge issue to Di Luna any more.

Di Luna sat up for a second so that he could remove his shirt, and then once he had removed it, he started pulling his chest binder off. Ferrando looked somewhere between confused and concerned, pausing with his hand hovering over Di Luna’s still-clothed thighs. “Would you rather I left it on? He hadn’t considered that Ferrando would be uncomfortable with it, but he supposed that it made sense that he wouldn’t be completely comfortable with it.

“No, if you want to then… do, I really don’t mind,” Ferrando said. “I just thought you preferred to leave it on, because…”

“You saw when we were in the bath together,” Di Luna said, even though this was not really a reply.

“I tried not to,” Ferrando replied. “You didn’t seem to want me to, so…

“And you’ve been inside me,” Di Luna said. It’s not like you don’t know what I look like.” Ferrando seemed more willing to accept that, and it occurred to Di Luna that he had probably seemed so uncomfortable because he had thought he had accidentally pressured Di Luna into something, when that wasn’t the case. Still, the mood had passed Di Luna by without his taking the binder off, so he decided against it. “Come on, then.”

When Di Luna said that, Ferrando was only too happy to take him up on the opportunity, moving his hands back to the hem of Di Luna’s hose. Di Luna started to pull them down, just so that he could have something to do while Ferrando undressed him, but Ferrando had him undressed before he had the chance. Di Luna sat up and pulled Ferrando back back up towards him. “I hope I know what you’re going to do,” he said, and Ferrando began rubbing him without Di Luna’s having to ask. Di Luna gasped; he hadn’t thought he would be as sensitive as he was when Ferrando began to touch him, but Ferrando knew just how to get him worked up, even with so little practice. “I don’t know how I’m going to return the favour, though,” Di Luna gasped against Ferrando’s lips.

“No?” Ferrando moved his thumb in slow circles between Di Luna’s thighs.

“No,” Di Luna gasped. “Because I’m not sure I could take you twice in such a short time…” He reached down and began to stroke Ferrando at the same speed as Ferrando was touching him. Ferrando laughed. “But I think you deserve something for behaving so well.” He laughed and pressed his mouth against Ferrando’s neck when Ferrando began stroking him with his thumb and forefinger. “And you’re already so good at this.” Di Luna groaned and rested his forehead against Ferrando’s shoulder, lying back on the bed and wrapping his thighs around Ferrando’s waist as Ferrando came down with him.

“Mmh. Are you sure you don’t…?” Ferrando wasn’t being pushy about what he wanted to do to Di Luna, but it was still clear just how desperately he wanted him, even though he had pulled his fingers away from Di Luna to make sure that his hand wasn’t trapped uncomfortably between their bodies.

Di Luna ordinarily would have given into him as soon as Ferrando suggested that he wanted it, even guided him in himself considering how desperate he was too, but he had been a little sore when he had woken up, and he still wanted to be able to walk for the rest of the day. Ferrando would have to content himself with the fact that Di Luna was going to touch him. He seemed to have liked it the previous night, and if he for some reason decided that he didn’t enjoy it this morning, well, he would just have to deal with that.

“I want to be able to walk for the rest of the week,” Di Luna teased him. Ferrando didn’t seem to object, but he made a noise in his throat that did very interesting things to Di Luna. “Although…” He tipped his head to the side to let Ferrando start biting and kissing his neck again. “Well, I’m sure you’ll be able to convince me. But you’ll have to do it later.”

Di Luna knew what he wanted now, and even though he had thought that it would be Ferrando in him again, the speed with which Ferrando had been able to finish him last time had almost been embarrassing, or it might have been if Di Luna hadn’t so enjoyed it. He had Ferrando on top of him now, and it would have been easy even if they didn’t have the oil, which was all the way over on the table beside the bed and therefore it might as well have been completely inaccessible. Di Luna wasn’t even sure that he and Ferrando had needed it the previous night, because it wasn’t as though Di Luna hadn’t been desperate for it then, but he had liked how stroking Ferrando with it had made him moan.

He would have Ferrando use his mouth on him, Di Luna decided, and then he would figure out how to return the favour in kind. Considering his inexperience, Ferrando had been incredibly good at it the previous night, especially when he had started to use his fingers on him too. The fact that Di Luna was no longer getting any stimulation from Ferrando’s fingers was starting to get frustrating, though - he wanted something, because everything Ferrando was doing now was a turn on but he wasn’t doing anything about it just yet. Di Luna could probably have reached down and started touching himself - it had seemed as though Ferrando had enjoyed watching him do that, too - but he wanted Ferrando to take the initiative.

Of course, if Ferrando started doing something for himself, without Di Luna having to tell him what to do, then Di Luna’s hand might just have been forced.

Luckily for Di Luna, Ferrando did begin to move, slowly kissing down Di Luna’s neck and shoulders until he reached the upper hem of his chest binder. Di Luna made a noise that he hoped suggested ‘just pretend none of that is there and keep going’, because he didn’t really want to say that and take them both out of the moment, and fortunately Ferrando got the idea without Di Luna needing to tell him explicitly what he wanted to do. Ferrando continued to move down, kissing Di Luna’s hips and moving to his inner thighs. Di Luna had thought that he might have started touching himself while Ferrando was doing what he was doing, but he had found himself transfixed by him to the extent that he just hadn’t been able to bring himself to do it, however much he had wanted it.

“Do you want me to…” Ferrando looked up at him, and Di Luna could tell that he was also hoping for the answer to be ‘yes’. Rather than try to give a verbal reply, because he knew he would sound ridiculous if he spoke out loud, Di Luna just nodded. “Good.” Ferrando was half-way on his side between Di Luna’s thighs, and it was almost a shame that Di Luna couldn’t reciprocate with his hand while Ferrando was between his legs as he currently was, but he supposed he would have to take care of that after he had finished.

Di Luna was holding Ferrando’s hair, or rather he had his left hand resting on the back of Ferrando’s head, with one hand, while the other was gripping onto the sheets, but as soon as Ferrando ran two of his fingers slowly up and then inside of Di Luna, both of Di Luna’s hands grabbed the sheets that he was lying on. He hadn’t been expecting Ferrando to start like this, but he also wasn’t arguing with it, because Ferrando was good at this, and even though he hadn’t wanted Ferrando’s cock inside him, he was only too happy to allow this. By now, of course, Ferrando could have done anything to Di Luna, or at least anything within reason, and Di Luna would still not just have enjoyed it but he would probably have begged Ferrando for more of it.

He slowly brought one hand from the sheets to the side of Ferrando’s face as Ferrando moved his fingers slowly inside him like he had last night, and Ferrando took the hint once again, putting his mouth properly against, and then around, Di Luna until he began sucking in time with his rocking his fingers back and forth inside of him. Di Luna could tell from how slowly he was moving, never speeding up for more than a couple of seconds and even then only doing so in a very careful way, that Ferrando wasn’t trying to get him to finish just yet, but he also thought that he wouldn’t be able to resist it for long. Even though this was on the second time he had done it, Ferrando was already so good at this that Di Luna would probably be done in a few seconds if he allowed himself to.

But he was going to play by the rules that Ferrando had apparently decided that they were following, and even though he wanted just to fall back against the covers and allow himself to come over Ferrando’s fingers and tongue, he instead put his thighs over Ferrando’s shoulders and pulled at Ferrando’s hair, his head tipped back even though he was still supporting his upper body with his arms. As soon as he did, Ferrando pulled his mouth and his fingers away from between Di Luna’s thighs and looked smugly up at him. He looked so annoyingly pleased with himself, but Di Luna wasn’t arguing. He had been smug about how easily he had got Ferrando turned on to the point of almost begging the previous night, so he supposed that it only made sense for Ferrando to feel smug about doing the same to Di Luna.

Of course, Di Luna would never beg him, he liked to think he had too much dignity for that even though he clearly didn’t because he was still pulling at Ferrando’s hair and moaning for him, because God, Ferrando really was remarkable at this. He looked at Ferrando with his head slightly to the side, but he didn’t ask why Ferrando had stopped what he was doing. He probably had a good reason for it - and Di Luna wasn’t going to get what he wanted from Ferrando if he kept stalling him to ask what he was doing.

Ferrando seemed glad that Di Luna hadn’t asked him what he was doing again; he pulled back up to start kissing Di Luna again and picked him up as he did so. Di Luna gasped and wrapped his arms around Ferrando, putting his legs around his waist. Ferrando had probably been meaning to do something else, but he still ended up sitting with Di Luna kneeling on top of him, on his lap, so Di Luna supposed that there was no way he would be getting what Ferrando had been meaning to do. He wasn’t sure that he really minded this, though - Ferrando was rapidly learning what Di Luna enjoyed having done to him, and the longer Di Luna allowed him to continue to do this the better he was getting at it.

“You didn’t want me to…” Ferrando briefly pulled away from Di Luna, who immediately began kissing his neck and his jaw when Ferrando’s mouth wasn’t on his. “Or—”

He was still hopeful, clearly. “Give me the bottle of oil,” Di Luna mumbled, even though, since Di Luna was on top of him, Ferrando was probably not as well placed to get it. Or Di Luna had thought that he might have difficulty with it, until Ferrando pushed him onto his back on the bed and reached over to the table for the bottle of oil. Di Luna grabbed for Ferrando as soon as he had the bottle of oil, and took the oil before Ferrando had the chance to use it.

“Why do you have this?”

“I’ll show you if you ever don’t want to fuck me,” Di Luna said. He poured some of the oil into his hand, and then began stroking Ferrando.

“Or if I want you to fuck me,” Ferrando suggested. His tone was indistinct enough from how much he wanted it that Di Luna would probably have put it down to Ferrando just saying something without thinking it, but at the same time, Di Luna got the impression from the way Ferrando pushed forward into his hand that yes, he really would enjoy that. He decided against pointing out that these would basically just be the same thing, because it hardly felt like it was worth stating. (In any case, maybe he could have Ferrando inside him and use something on Ferrando at the same time. He could think about that when he was more coherent and better placed to have a conversation.)

Ferrando continued to push forward into Di Luna’s hand as Di Luna stroked him. Di Luna sat up so that Ferrando could rub against him properly as he rocked his hips against Di Luna’s fist. “You still want to be inside me again, don’t you?” Di Luna mumbled. He guided Ferrando as close as he could to him without letting Ferrando inside of him, putting the fingers of one hand against Ferrando’s stomach. He didn’t need to say what he wanted for Di Luna to know that the answer; he felt Ferrando’s cock twitch against his hand at the suggestion and the proximity. “Lie down.” Ferrando did as he was told immediately, clearly hoping that this would get Di Luna to do what he was hoping to do, and Di Luna went to straddle him.

“Fadrique…”

Di Luna began to rock against Ferrando, slowly at first because he still wanted to quiz Ferrando about what he had been intending and he couldn’t do that if he was actually doing what Ferrando wanted him to. “What were you going to do when you picked me up, then?” Di Luna asked. He poured some more oil into his hand to rub over Ferrando’s cock, even though he was sure that he was slick enough even if Di Luna wouldn’t have been able to take him inside of him without the oil.

“I wanted…” Ferrando made a sound that Di Luna took to be a combination of ‘I don’t know’ and ‘I can’t think enough to explain while I’m like this’. Di Luna liked the fact that he could have this effect on him, but he was also very, very curious.

“You wanted to be inside me again, didn’t you?” Di Luna purred, spreading himself open with his fingers in a way that he hoped would suggest to Ferrando that he might just be allowed to be inside him for a second time. Ferrando thrust needily against him and put his hands on Di Luna’s hips so that he could guide him.

“Yes. Please.” Ferrando was breathing heavily. “I know you didn’t—”

Di Luna shushed him. “I don’t think I would mind, necessarily,” he said, “but I don’t think you’ll last long enough to finish me off before you come.”

“Probably not,” Ferrando gasped. Di Luna was still rubbing against him, making sure Ferrando was getting as much stimulation from this as he possibly could. “And you liked—”

“I did.” Di Luna didn’t know what Ferrando was referring to, but he probably wasn’t wrong. Just about everything Ferrando had done last night had been uniquely wonderful. “But I also like being able to walk. So not just now.” He still let Ferrando roll them over so that he was on his back with Ferrando on top of him: now that they were positioned like this, it was easier for Ferrando to start touching Di Luna again. At first, he just held his fingers against the nub between Di Luna’s thighs, just teasing as he thrust against Di Luna’s thigh. “Come on me first,” Di Luna gasped.

“Sir—”

“Please.” Di Luna reached back down between Ferrando’s thighs and began to stroke him again. “I want you to come on me,” he said, feeling Ferrando begin thrusting harder and harder into his fist. “And then once you have come…” Ferrando groaned, burying his face in Di Luna’s shoulder. “You’re getting close, aren’t you?”

“Yes — sir — please?”

“Good boy.” As he spoke, Di Luna pulled Ferrando’s head up so that he could start kissing him again. Ferrando was moaning into his mouth, even as the way he was kissing Di Luna became more and more aggressive. Seeing him like this, Di Luna just wanted to start touching himself again, but he wanted Ferrando to be the one to finish him, and he was sure that, combined with the way Ferrando was moaning and thrusting against him, he wouldn’t last long enough to you. “Are you…?”

“Yes, I—” Ferrando cut himself off, and gasped loudly, as though the sound that he had actually been intending to make had got stuck in his throat. Di Luna kept stroking him until he finally felt Ferrando spill over his hand and his stomach, and then fall on Di Luna to start kissing him again. “What do you want me to…? God…” Di Luna didn’t stop stroking Ferrando until he stopped thrusting against his hand, and then he slowly took his fingers away without looking away from Ferrando’s face.

“I think… just about anything you do…” Di Luna began to guide Ferrando’s hand down between his thighs to begin touching him with his fingers again. “Keep going like that, just slowly…” Di Luna leaned his head back slightly.

“Do you want me to use my mouth on you again?”

“Yes.” Di Luna didn’t wait before he answered.

Ferrando had clearly been expecting that to be the answer, because he moved Di Luna to sit on the edge of the bed and knelt on the floor in front of him. He stopped for a couple of seconds, as though he was waiting for Di Luna to give him permission, and then opened Di Luna up around his fingers. “Mmh. Let me… let me do that.” Di Luna pushed Ferrando’s hand out of the way and spread himself open. “I want your fingers inside me again.” Ferrando complied almost immediately, and in response Di Luna laid back and lifted his legs up over Ferrando’s shoulders.

Di Luna moaned as Ferrando’s tongue finally ran over the nub between his thighs and he began moving his tongue in slow circles and rocked and curled his fingers inside of his partner. If he was doing this to himself, Di Luna would have lost control already and have started rubbing himself hard, probably already moaning Ferrando’s name, but Ferrando was clearly enjoying drawing it out, moving his tongue and his fingers as slowly as he could. Di Luna groaned, still holding himself open with his fingers even though he was sure that Ferrando could manage without it.

As soon as Di Luna started making sounds in response to what he was doing, Ferrando went from licking to sucking, still moving slowly and keeping Di Luna right on the edge without letting him tumble over. Di Luna gasped out loud at the sensation all the same, because what Ferrando was doing just felt so insanely good, and in response, Ferrando hummed around him. Di Luna whimpered in response, because he hadn’t thought that it was even possible for Ferrando to do something that felt better than what he had been doing a few seconds ago.

“Keep going,” Di Luna breathed, bringing his free hand to the back of Ferrando’s head to keep him there and to pull at his hair when he did anything that Di Luna particularly enjoyed, because Ferrando had clearly enjoyed having his hair pulled the previous night. Ferrando bobbed his head in response to the praise and laughed around him. His voice was low and it sent vibrations all through Di Luna’s body that made him moan again. “Oh… God…” As soon as Di Luna spoke, Ferrando sped up again.

He used one hand to push Di Luna’s thigh up against his chest, and as soon as he did so, Di Luna pulled his other leg up, and felt Ferrando laugh against him again. Especially with the way that Ferrando laughed, the fact that his legs were now closer to his chest changed the angle in a way that, had Ferrando not moved him fairly slowly, would probably have made Di Luna come immediately. As it was, the increased pressure and the change did make it feel even better, but Di Luna still managed to hold back.

Di Luna moved his hand from the back of Ferrando’s head to bury his face in the crook of his arm and keep from making too much noise. “Don’t stop.” This also meant ‘don’t change anything you’re doing’, but Di Luna couldn’t quite get that across with how it felt having Ferrando doing this. Ferrando got the idea, still moving his fingers inside Di Luna and sucking and licking him with exactly the same rhythm. Di Luna could feel himself beginning to shudder, even though he wasn’t holding back, but God he was close. He moved his hand back down, and gasped and tugged again on Ferrando’s hair to let him know, and felt Ferrando curl and twist his fingers inside him. “Ferrando!” Di Luna grabbed his hair tightly as he finally came over Ferrando’s fingers.

Ferrando carried on sucking, although he was doing it slower and more gently as Di Luna came down from the orgasm, before Di Luna lightly pushed his head away by his shoulders. He pulled his fingers free as Di Luna fell back against the bed. He would probably need to go and take a bath again, and he wanted Ferrando to join him again but now that he was completely awake and they both had clearly figured out what the other liked in bed, he knew where that would probably lead. Well, it might be fun, he supposed.

Just not right now, when he was both exhausted and sticky, and Ferrando was clearly also too tired to move. Instead of suggesting anything, Di Luna pulled Ferrando up onto the bed so that he wasn’t still kneeling on the floor.

* * *

Di Luna was very tempted, as soon as he and Ferrando finished up, to just go back to sleep for the rest of the day. He slept during the day a lot as it was, and he was tired now, and he wanted to have Ferrando’s undivided attention for a while before he had to go and do anything. But he also knew that he had things to do if he didn’t want to annoy anybody who worked for him, because he usually tried to be as good about being involved with the people of his land as he could. If he wasn’t pulling his weight, even if he had what he thought was a perfectly good reason, not only would it annoy the people around him but he would feel guilty.

This was the reason that he wanted to be so involved in battle as well, even though most other nobles were happy to stay back from the field and “co-ordinate” from afar. His father had always wanted to be involved because he perceived some sort of glory in it, but Di Luna just felt like he was shirking his duty if he wasn’t constantly doing as much as he possibly could. He left the planning of battle to Ferrando, who had more of a mind for this sort of thing than he did anyway, so that he could go and be in the field with his men rather than staying back and far behind the lines. This meant two things: first, that he knew what the men went through in order to fight for him - because it was for him, for the most part. They weren’t too involved in whatever greater drama he was wound up in, and he was sure that farmers didn’t care about who stood to inherit the throne of Aragon, but they did care that Di Luna kept their taxes fairly low, and that somebody else taking over his land would probably raise taxes.

Di Luna did not make a huge amount of money off either the county that he ruled or the city of Segorb, because of how low the taxes he placed were. It was enough for him to be able to keep himself in the situation that he wanted to be in and to have a little left over, because he maintained very little standing army, but what this did breed was a lack of animosity between him and the locals who lived on his land, which he maintained by being as involved as he possibly could with their activities, in both war and peace time. He was fairly sure that he could attribute the fact that he had won every battle against James Urquell’s men in part to this, although the fact that they were a poorly-trained army also didn’t hurt his case.

The issue here was, however, that every time Di Luna spent even a day not doing as much as he physically could, he felt incredibly guilty for not working constantly. He must have been one of the only nobles that had this view, but this didn’t make it any less frustrating, and the fact that he just wanted to be with Ferrando and not do any work today didn’t count as an excuse in his mind, even though he could tell that Ferrando would have preferred to stay in bed. (He was hard-working too, but he had a better relationship with his work ethic than Di Luna, who was highly-strung to nearly the point of neuroticism.)

“You’re already going?” Ferrando had been lying next to him on the bed for about five minutes before Di Luna got to his feet to go and get dressed again.

Di Luna would have preferred not to have to clean himself up again so soon after he had had a bath previously, but he was definitely unpleasantly sticky and sweaty now, so he would have to. Ferrando, however, would not be joining him this time, because he knew he would just get distracted. Of course, he couldn’t blame Ferrando, since if Ferrando had been feeling like this about Di Luna for as long as Di Luna had been feeling this about Ferrando, then it made sense to Di Luna that he would be this needy all the time Di Luna wasn’t immediately available. This didn’t meant that it wasn’t at least a little irritating, especially since Di Luna had things to do now that didn’t involve him, but he had to take it as a compliment.

Leonora certainly had never showed this much interest in him, even after she had found out that he was in love with Ferrando and not her. She had been all too happy to get rid of him, not that he was too upset by that fact, because he also didn’t want to have to spend all his time with her, and she didn’t want to spend all her time with him. Ferrando, on the other hand, he could gladly have spent the rest of his life without being apart from, and Ferrando clearly felt the same about him. This made things far easier for both of them - for the most part, because Ferrando was being extremely needy now that he knew he was allowed to - and also meant that Leonora, well, he supposed he would just pretend not to know what she was up to. What he didn’t know (or what he pretended not to know) couldn’t hurt him, and, more importantly, couldn’t hurt Ferrando.

Ferrando had gone again by the time Di Luna returned from the bath, so he was able to take his time getting dressed again. He was still wearing Ferrando’s shirts even though he couldn’t shake the feeling that maybe Ferrando would want them back, but even if he and Ferrando hadn’t have been a couple he would have continued wearing them. They were just more comfortable, and Di Luna couldn’t stand the way that his own shirts were all starched so much he could barely move in them. Ferrando’s very much were not starched, and Di Luna didn’t know what he washed them in but they were softer even than un-starched cotton, which was extremely comfortable. If Ferrando didn’t want Di Luna to keep taking his shirts then, well, he could ask, and Ferrando wasn’t above being forthright even to nobles, but since he didn’t, Di Luna assumed that he didn’t have any objections to his shirts being appropriated.

Di Luna would have been happy, after having thought about it, just to stay in bed with Ferrando for a bit longer, but since Ferrando was up and awake when he got back he couldn’t justify just going back to bed when he had got dressed. He didn’t want to either if he would just be on his own; Ferrando was a very good justification for staying in bed but he couldn’t convince himself to stay in bed if he was just on his own. There were plenty of things that he probably should have been doing that he didn’t actually want to do; the fact that he had even bothered to get out of bed was enough effort expended in his mind.

Ferrando was indeed up and awake, but he hadn’t gone far in the time that Di Luna had been bathing and then changing into clean clothes. In fact, he hadn’t even left Di Luna’s rooms, having got distracted by one of the books in the library that was adjacent to the bedroom. It had been Di Luna’s father’s library; Di Luna himself wasn’t too keen on reading for the most part although he was fluent in several languages and had various other skills expected of a noble besides. The fact that Ferrando wasn’t a noble by birth, even though Di Luna had raised his rank, but Di Luna was even though Di Luna much preferred running around the forest to more noble skills and Ferrando was probably more diplomatic, and certainly more willing to put in an effort to appear dignified, than Di Luna was.

Di Luna didn’t want to distract Ferrando from what he was reading, and anyway he wasn’t sure that whatever it was they had to do that day was that important, so rather than stopping Ferrando from reading the book he had picked up, he sat down next to him on the seat in the windowsill that Ferrando had sat on. When Di Luna rested his head on Ferrando’s shoulder, he moved so that Di Luna could lean on him a little more easily, but otherwise didn’t do anything. Di Luna looked down at the page of the book, but he didn’t see anything particularly interesting - he and Ferrando had always had completely different tastes in this sort of thing, even if they were remarkably similar otherwise. He would have preferred just to spend time with Ferrando anyway, even if that did involve not talking but just sitting and allowing Ferrando to read for a while.

“You might as well just stay with me today,” Ferrando said, after he had been silent for a good while. When Di Luna looked down at the book he saw that Ferrando had reached the end of a chapter, which explained why he had suddenly wanted to start talking again. “I don’t have too much to do, and I certainly don’t have anything that I couldn’t do if there was another person there.”

“Even if I’m the other person?” Di Luna joked.

“Only because I’m not doing that in the woods,” Ferrando laughed in response.

“Well that’s no fun,” Di Luna said. He couldn’t understand Ferrando’s objection to the idea of doing anything in the woods, but he was curious. “Why, though?”

“Well, for one thing I’m sure you’d probably freeze to death before we finished,” Ferrando said, “since you were freezing last night when we were dressed.”

“Who said it would have to be at night?” Di Luna moved sideways a little and crossed his legs as he sat on the windowsill beside Ferrando. Ferrando had been gentle with him just now but he still felt a little fuzzy-headed from their activities. “And you’re perfectly capable of starting a fire.”  
Ferrando laughed at that. “Well, I suppose neither of us is above it during the day,” he said. “But it would still be uncomfortable, and you seem to be above being on your back.”  
“Well, I’d do anything for the right price,” Di Luna said. Ferrando laughed and let Di Luna lean into his side. “As long as you don’t put me on my hands and knees again.”

“Well, that’s fair,” Ferrando said. “But I didn’t know it wouldn’t be…” He gestured, clearly trying to think of a way to phrase it that wouldn’t embarrass himself.

Unfortunately, Di Luna was very much in the mood to embarrass him. “Bad?” he suggested.

It hadn’t actually been bad, or Di Luna didn’t think he would even have been here. The problem had been that it had been abrupt, and with somebody who clearly hadn’t been sure of how to make sure Di Luna was satisfied too. That was understandable, though; Ferrando had never been with anybody like Di Luna before so he wouldn’t need to know what he was doing in that situation, and he had been angry and frustrated at the time. It had certainly given Di Luna something to think about, even when he had been with Leonora, who he hoped didn’t know that he had been thinking about Ferrando when he had been with her. She probably did know, though, considering that she had been the one to shove him into this relationship with Ferrando. He would have to thank her properly for that at some point, because he was genuinely grateful, but maybe that would have to wait until after he and Ferrando were a little better settled, or at least until after today.

“Perhaps not the word I would have used,” Ferrando said, but he didn’t sound offended, just amused.

“You wouldn’t say that,” Di Luna said. “You clearly enjoyed it.”

“And you didn’t?” Now Ferrando did sound a little offended, but not enough to the point that Di Luna was worried about having seriously hurt his feelings.

“Of course I did.” Di Luna leaned over to put his arms around Ferrando’s waist. “I’ll have to tell you just how much some time.” Ferrando raised his eyebrows at that comment, clearly knowing what Di Luna was implying with the comment. Di Luna leaned away from him. “What do you need to know that’s so urgent that you have time to sit around in here and read, anyway?”

“Well, it mostly seems to be things that you should be doing.” Ferrando put the book back on the windowsill rather than on the shelf. Di Luna hadn’t seen anything that interested him when he had been looking over Ferrando’s shoulder while he was reading, but Ferrando had clearly been enjoying it. It was amusing that he thought he might have enough time free to actually read, though, since he had had to get rid of Di Luna into the bath in order to start reading. When they were together it was clear that neither of them was thinking about reading, or any intellectual pursuits: even when Di Luna wasn’t actively trying to get Ferrando back into bed with him, this was the direction that their conversation had immediately gone in.

Di Luna was, however, glad that somebody was getting some enjoyment out of the library. He felt bad that he didn’t much like reading, aside from the odd romance novel that he certainly didn’t buy for himself unless they were for Leonora, and that he certainly didn’t actually take from her sometimes, because his father and his grandfather before him had collected all of these books with the hopes that he and V— would enjoy them. Obviously, V— was now dead, so it fell entirely to him, and he had barely appreciated them at all. They were mostly books about military leadership, with some novels and books in other languages mixed in, but the novels didn’t appeal to him and he wasn’t interested in the theory of military leadership so much as he was interested in running around in a field with a sword. He didn’t mind leaving the more theoretical military leadership, the sort which involved drawing lines on charts and understanding how to read maps, to Ferrando. He appeared to have a gift where that was concerned and he also enjoyed doing it. Di Luna, on the other hand, couldn’t imagine anything that could be more boring than that.

“And what do you think I should be doing, then?” Ferrando would know that Di Luna wasn’t actually offended by the fact that Ferrando presumed to know how to do his job better than he did. On an ordinary day Ferrando actually did know what Di Luna needed to do with himself better than Di Luna himself, for one thing, but he also didn’t nag or lecture Di Luna about it. If it was something that he wasn’t good at because he was better at something else while the thing he was actually supposed to be doing was something that Ferrando enjoyed or was good at, then Ferrando didn’t mind switching duties, and Di Luna didn’t mind picking up Ferrando’s tasks in return.

“You’re supposed to be receiving some emissary from the village in the valley,” Ferrando said. Di Luna made a noise: he did not like to deal with emissaries at the best of times, and that was the village where Manrico lived, which meant he was probably something to do with Manrico, probably asking for Leonora back. “And I’m meant to be patrolling the woods again.”

Di Luna sighed. “I think I would rather disappear into the forest with you,” he said.

“So we’re both going on patrol?” Ferrando asked. “I thought you might ask me to meet with this emissary in exchange.”

“You tried to burn the last one alive.” Di Luna didn’t think about what he was saying before he said it, but Ferrando clearly didn’t take it personally.

“I don’t think she was an emissary,” Ferrando said. He was surprisingly diplomatic about it, considering that he really had been a few seconds from setting Azucena on fire when he had realised who she was in the camp outside of Castellar but even so, Di Luna could still tell that this was not a conversation that Ferrando actually wanted to continue having. He decided to back off instead. “We could both meet with their emissary, I suppose,” Ferrando suggested. Di Luna had clearly been right to stop trying to make Ferrando talk about this, because he had changed the subject very abruptly.

“We could,” Di Luna agreed. Had they not been treading around a very sensitive subject, Di Luna might have joked about having to babysit Ferrando around outsiders to stop him from doing anything he shouldn’t do to them, but with his mental state being what it was, that would just seem bullying. “But…” He frowned. “Didn’t you have the patrol last night?”

“I wasn’t supposed to.” Ferrando was clearly glad of the change of subject. “I should have been asleep when you came and found me,” he said, “but one of the new recruits got scared by the ghost stories and he didn’t want to.”

Di Luna laughed. He had never believed in the ghost stories, because Ferrando had been making up increasingly fanciful and violent bedtime stories for him since he had been a child, and the ghost stories were clearly just a continuation of that. There had been one about a dragon that burned up the entire county that Di Luna’s nursemaid as a child had been worried would traumatise him for weeks, but all that had happened was that Di Luna had argued with Leonora about who had to be the dragon when they played pretend. (Leonora had usually won. She had continued to usually win against Di Luna right into his adulthood, but he couldn’t begrudge her it because she also did things that helped him.) Perhaps the fact that Di Luna was difficult to frighten was a bad thing, or could be a bad thing, but at least it meant that he wasn’t afraid to go into the woods at night.

“You know,” Ferrando continued, getting to his feet, “I think the woods would be the place I would be least afraid to be wandering around in at night.”

“Oh?” As Ferrando spoke, Di Luna kicked his boots, which he was closer to than Ferrando, over to him. “Surely that’s exactly where James Urquell’s men would be hiding.”  
Ferrando started pulling his boots on. “You saw how pathetic they were at Castellar, and then again when they tried to attack us,” he said. He left the room for a moment, and then returned with his and Di Luna’s cloaks and Di Luna’s boots.

“But even if they aren’t a danger, there are wolves and… God knows what else hiding in there.” Di Luna started putting his boots on, without getting off the windowsill. He was shorter than Ferrando so when he was sat on the seat in the window his feet dangled without touching the floor. “And bandits.”

“Wolves won’t hurt you,” Ferrando said. “I’m more scared of cattle and pigs than I am of wolves or foxes, or whatever other predators there are out there.” That was an odd choice of words, and an odder choice of animal to be afraid of, but Di Luna didn’t care to prod into it. Ferrando had grown up surrounded by farmland so he probably had a reason that Di Luna just wasn’t aware of because of his own upbringing, and the reason probably wasn’t even that interesting. “And the bandits…” He actually had to think about that one for a moment. “Well, I can’t imagine that they’ll know the woods too well. I could chase them off a cliff.”

“You could.” Di Luna and Ferrando were now both fully dressed to head out, which was fortunate. Di Luna threw his cloak on over his shoulders, while Ferrando carried his, as they left the library together and headed down to the woods. “You’re tall, though. I don’t think I could.”

“Well… That would be your own personal problem.” That was typical of Ferrando. It was a good thing Di Luna liked him as much as he did, because he was capable of being hideously smug, and anybody else would probably have been far less tolerant of how he was. Luckily, Di Luna didn’t just tolerate it but he appreciated it, which he hoped Ferrando knew; he wasn’t going to tell him just yet because it would just make him more smug, but Di Luna did love and appreciate Ferrando.

Di Luna, on the other hand, didn’t doubt that he himself could at least frighten bandits or James Urquell’s men, even though he wasn’t particularly strong. He was small and weak to look at, and Ferrando could and regularly did pick him up with barely any effort being expended, but he was also a particularly aggressive person when he needed to be (or wanted to be). He felt that he had a lot to prove to be seen as male, as well: as a result, even though he didn’t look strong, he certainly was. He didn’t doubt that he could at least scare a group of bandits, or some of James Urquell’s men.

Still, there wouldn’t be any need for that during the day, as no bandit, no matter how desperate, would be willing to try jumping on them when they could be seen, unmasked, and hauled back to the palace where they would be publicly shamed, and James Urquell’s men seemed to have got the right idea by now and left the palace alone. This was a definite advantage to the fact that Di Luna had scared Manrico, who had been James Urquell’s greatest enforcer, away: the rest of his men would no longer try to bother Di Luna or the Prince of Aragon.

The fact that Di Luna and the Prince were cousins (or rather that the Prince was Di Luna’s first cousin once removed, or something like that where he wasn’t his parent’s sibling’s child but they were closely enough related that they had spent a good amount of time together as children), and that he and the Prince also had a close relationship, meant that Di Luna was given a lot of freedom, both as a Count and on the land. He had interesting ideas about what the Prince could do with his land, while the Prince (James of Aragon - the fact that he and his rival had the same name was an irony that was not lost on Di Luna, even though he would never say as much to his cousin) wasn’t particularly concerned with landscaping. As such, while the land itself belonged to James, most of the landscaping on it and especially the deer park was actually Di Luna’s doing.

The deer park itself, and indeed the concept of a deer park, wasn’t actually Di Luna’s invention (he thought it might have been an English idea, actually; it was mentioned in one of the books in the library but he also didn’t care to know), nor was it something that he could take all of the credit for to creation and upkeep of. There had been deer on the land surrounding the palace for God only knew how long, and Di Luna certainly hadn’t invented fencing them in or breeding them, or charging other nobles to come and shoot them, but he was responsible for the interesting shape of the course which the nobles could hunt on. It was perhaps more brutal than he naturally was inclined to be, but he was also proud of it, especially the initiative to put it at the bottom of the ridge so that spectators could have a bird’s eye view of the sport when it was ongoing.

He and Ferrando had stopped on the ridge now, even though there was no coursing ongoing. They could still see the herd of fallow deer, a few does with their fawns at foot, with a couple of mature bucks and some younger bucks which must have been born the year before. They would have to be thinned off some time soon so that the bucks didn’t start fighting and the does kept mating with the bucks and producing new fawns, but for now it wasn’t a huge concern. Di Luna had seen the deer fight before, and it could be bloody especially if the bucks were large, but it seemed as though there wasn’t any risk of anything happening just yet.

Di Luna would often go for long walks on his own, but he would usually have dogs, or at least one dog, with him. The only reason he hadn’t yesterday was because it would have seemed irresponsible because he would have been coming back with Ferrando and they would have been too distracted by the time they got back in any case, because Ferrando had been unable to keep his hands off Di Luna the whole time they had been walking back, and Di Luna had a terrible attention span when he wasn’t about to jump into bed with somebody else, especially if that person was somebody he had been pining over for years.

He bred the dogs himself - it was a respectable noble hobby that Di Luna had taken up when he had turned around seventeen, just after having his hysterectomy. He hadn’t

been up to doing much else but he had been able to throw himself into choosing the best dogs and breeding them, and so on until he had the pack of hunting dogs that he had now. They were good quality dogs too, he thought; they ran well, and they were easily trained and weren’t aggressive to humans. And they tended to have long and successful lives, and produce many puppies without needing help with the whelping process. Also, because Di Luna didn’t believe in the culling of old dogs, when they retired they transitioned wonderfully to companions: last night had been the first time he hadn’t had at least a couple of retired dogs on the bed with him for a long time, and they never seemed to pine for activity other than liking to be taken for a walk.

He hoped that Ferrando would be as willing as he was to embrace having the dogs around, but he couldn’t see why he wouldn’t be. In fact, Ferrando had been particularly encouraging of it as a hobby when Di Luna had first realised that it was something that he might have liked to do, because it got him out of bed without him being in constant pain, or at least without his being aware of it. He hadn’t coped too well with recovering from surgery, especially because he had been confined to bed for days at a time after and unable to move, but the fact that he had had this to do, and that he had discovered that he was good at it in so far as one could be “good” at breeding dogs, had motivated him.

“So,” Di Luna said. He and Ferrando were sat down on the grass on the top of the ridge and watching the deer, and they had been there for a few minutes before Di Luna had spoken. “Are we really ‘patrolling’?” he asked. “Or did you just want to have me to yourself for a bit longer?”

Ferrando shrugged. “We can see as much as we need to from up here,” he said. “And I would much rather be on my own with you than I would be with the other men.” Di Luna wasn’t sure whether he should take that as a compliment - he knew that Ferrando didn’t much care for the other soldiers - but he appreciated the sentiment, at least.

“I’m glad to hear that you take your work so seriously,” Di Luna joked, and leaned into Ferrando before he had the chance to reply. “I’d much rather have stayed in bed for the rest of the day,” he said, his tone full of false innocence. “Especially if you were going to carry on like you had been.”

Ferrando laughed again when Di Luna said that. “I’m still not going to have sex with you outside. Even if you keep complimenting me.” He tapped Di Luna lightly on the nose, and went to carry on speaking. Di Luna pushed him down and kissed him before he had the opportunity to carry on talking. He could tell that Ferrando was glad of this fact, and that, even though he had been saying all day that he wasn’t interested in having sex outdoors, he would have been more than happy to have sex while they were outdoors. When Di Luna pushed him down, rather than moving him away, Ferrando laid down and pulled Di Luna on top of him, so that Di Luna was straddling his thigh. He was overjoyed that Ferrando wanted him this much - he had never had this from Leonora, but he liked the change.

**Author's Note:**

> also, you probably noticed some griping in the additional tags up there. here's a little context for that: basically, [the historical di luna](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederic,_Count_of_Luna)... did not have anything like the backstory we see in the opera. he was actually one of two bastard children of [king martin the younger of sicily](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_I_of_Sicily), along with a sister called violante, who was about a year older than him (rather than a younger brother like in the opera).
> 
> the fact that the real di luna was a bastard meant that he couldn't inherit the throne because he wasn't martin of sicily's legitimate issue in the eyes of the church. his grandfather, martin the elder, sought to have him legitimised but he died of laughter (which was apparently a thing that you could just... do in the medieval era) before he was able to get him legitimised. the civil war we see in the opera with di luna _et al._ siding with the prince of aragon (the real di luna's cousin) while manrico sides with james urgell (who was not a popular choice of ruler) actually happened, but i've taken the liberty of moving stuff around in history.
> 
> another thing i moved around in history was violante luisa, who was actually the wife of the real fadrique de luna (as in, the di luna from the opera), but who in this has been turned into di luna's mother. this is partly because violante is a fantastic name (it's the medieval equivalent of yolanda, which has other variations, such as [iolanthe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iolanthe)/[iolanta](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iolanta)), but also partly because, frankly, if [moving historical figures around](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruy_G%C3%B3mez_de_Silva,_1st_Prince_of_%C3%89boli) was good enough for [victor hugo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hernani_\(drama\)) then it's good enough for me.
> 
> this prologue was around 2500 words long; each chapter is going to be c.7000 words long. i will put nsfw warnings at the beginning of explicit chapters, for those who wish to avert their eyes from the experience of seeing opera characters bone. also the reason i censor di luna and manrico's old names in the prologue when The Backstory is ongoing is because... it's that way with génder.
> 
> finally, i have taken the historical liberty of [inventing the abdominal hysterectomy just over 400 years too early](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0950355297800478). that is because i wanted to. i am not accepting questions at this time.


End file.
